Purpose

While studies on patients’ quality of life (QoL) are numerous, to date few have addressed the issue of what QoL means for doctors and how they use patient-reported QoL. This study aimed to explore how doctors define the concept of “patient QoL” and how they use QoL assessments in clinical practice.

Methods

Focus group (FG) interviews were conducted with French hospital doctors and general practitioners. Transcripts of the FGs were explored using inductive thematic and lexical analyses.

Results

Twenty-one clinicians participated in four FGs. They all agreed that QoL was a subjective and unstable concept, different from that of health status. In practice, the assessment of patient QoL was conducted using an intuitive and non-structured approach. Most participants thought that it would give them more confidence in making decisions and provide better patient care. But it was also seen in some cases as putting them in an uncomfortable position. The assessment of QoL requires a favourable work and organizational setting.

Conclusions

Patient QoL provides useful data for clinicians. Yet assessments are made without standardized tools. The use of such tools could be very valuable for some practitioners or in some situations, and a real source of problems for others. These problems could, however, be easily overcome with experience-sharing and training clinicians.

中文翻译：

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医生如何看待和使用患者的生活质量？焦点小组访谈医院医生和全科医生的发现。

目的

尽管有关患者生活质量（QoL）的研究很多，但迄今为止，很少有研究解决QoL对医生的意义以及他们如何使用患者报告的QoL的问题。本研究旨在探讨医生如何定义“患者QoL”的概念以及他们如何在临床实践中使用QoL评估。

方法

焦点小组（FG）采访了法国医院的医生和全科医生。使用归纳主题和词汇分析来探索FG的文字记录。

结果

21名临床医生参加了4个FG。他们都同意，生活质量是一个主观且不稳定的概念，不同于健康状况。在实践中，使用一种直观且非结构化的方法对患者的生活质量进行了评估。大多数参与者认为这将使他们更有信心做出决策并提供更好的患者护理。但是在某些情况下，这也使他们感到不舒服。质量要求的评估需要良好的工作和组织环境。

结论

患者QoL为临床医生提供有用的数据。然而，评估是在没有标准化工具的情况下进行的。对于某些从业者或在某些情况下，使用此类工具可能非常有价值，而对于其他人则是真正的问题根源。但是，可以通过经验分享和培训临床医生来轻松克服这些问题。