PROMs (Patient Reported Outcome Measures), patient questionnaires, provide a great basis for the conversation between healthcare provider and patient. APH researcher Lotte Haverman, senior researcher with a clinical background in medical psychology and project leader of the PROM expertise point, notices an increase in the attention paid to questionnaires. "We are having good conversations more and more, because we know better how the patient is really doing."

Difference in symptoms

The questionnaires are not a redundancy. Research shows that practitioner and patient do not always report the same severity of symptoms. "With good questionnaires, you can prevent miscommunication. To be able to make decisions together and set goals in the consulting room, a practitioner needs to know what the patient is struggling with and where he wants to see improvement. The questionnaires provide structured information to start the conversation."

The PROM Expertise Point

Haverman's enthusiasm for the questionnaires soon grew into doctoral research and, in 2011, the creation of the online KLIK PROM portal. This portal makes it possible to follow the functioning of patients over a longer period of time, so that the doctor or nurse can see at a glance how the patient is doing. With KLIK, a lot of experience and knowledge has been gained about implementing PROMs in healthcare, for both pediatrics and adult patients. This resulted in the multidisciplinary PROM Expertise Point in 2019.

PROMs primarily measure patients' physical, mental, and social health. For example, the questions are about the amount of pain, sadness, or anxiety. Patients usually fill out the PROMs at home and later discuss them with their practitioner. "Good PROMs are short," Haverman explains. "They should be completed in no more than ten minutes, so they are not too much of a burden for the patient. As a point of expertise, we help departments choose from a set of generic PROMs that we know are good. Supplemented with a few disease-specific questions. We also support departments with implementation."

Grants

In recent years, there has been increasing attention to the use of PROMs in healthcare. In fact, Haverman was recently awarded three grants, including a prestigious Vidi grant. "With that money, we're going to investigate how to make PROMs more accessible to low-literacy people, non-native speakers and patients with severe motor and speech impairments," Haverman says. "These groups may need the questionnaires the most, but cannot use them properly right now. We want to modify the questionnaires so that the outcomes can still be compared well with the regular PROMs, so that we also gain more insight into how different patient groups experience their health situation."

Interested in using PROMs for daily practice? Mail the PROM Expertise Point: promexpertisepunt@amsterdamumc.nl.

Read the full article in Dutch here: ‘Dankzij vragenlijsten weten we beter hoe het met de patiënt gaat’ (tulpintranet.nl)