Personalized Experiences to Inform Improved Communication for Patients With Life Limiting Illness

The QOC survey assesses patients' perceptions of the quality of communication with nurses. The QOC was initially developed from qualitative interviews and focus groups with diverse set of patients, families and providers. The QOC has 19 items, with scores ranging from 0 (worst) to 10 (best). Internal consistency reliability and construct validity of the QOC has been established across several illness groups, and the QOC survey's responsiveness to communication interventions has been demonstrated by changes in pre- and post-intervention scores.

PROMIS- 29 profile v2.0 form (29 items), which assesses physiological, social, and psychological outcomes. These biopsychosocial domains include physical function, anxiety, depression, fatigue, sleep, ability to participate in social roles/activities, pain interference and intensity. The questions are ranked on a 5-point Likert Scale. There is also one 11-point rating scale for pain intensity. High scores represent more of the domain being measured. Thus, on symptom-oriented domains of PROMIS-29 (anxiety, depression, fatigue, pain interference, and sleep disturbance), higher scores represent worse symptomatology. On the function-oriented domains (physical functioning and social role) higher scores represent better functioning. For example, a high sleep disturbance score indicates high levels of sleep disturbance; a high physical functioning score indicates better physical function.

The PROMIS positive item bank measure (8 items) assesses positive psychosocial outcomes of illness.The PROMIS negative item bank measure (8 items) assesses the direct negative psychosocial effect of illness, distinct from general emotional distress. The item bank instructs participants to think about how their illness has affected them. The item bank uses the time frames: before your illness" and "since your illness". For adults, each question has five response options ranging in value from two to five. To find the total raw score for a short form with all questions answered, sum the values of the response to each question, range 16-40. A higher PROMIS T-score represents more of the concept being measured. For positively-worded concepts like Psychosocial Illness Impact-Positive, a T-score of 60 is one standard deviation (SD) better than average. By comparison, a Psychosocial Illness Impact-Positive T-score of 40 is one SD worse than average.