Principles & Practice of Pain Medicine > Part II. Pain: General Principles and Evaluation > Chapter 7. Outcome Measurements in Pain Medicine Harriët Wittink, Leonidas C. Goudas, Scott Strassels, and Daniel B. Carr

Conclusion

"In this chapter, we have presented an overview of the terminology used in HRQOL outcomes assessment and examples of instruments that can be applied in clinical practice. Systematic measurement and documentation of HRQOL is a useful, clinically relevant approach to incorporate patient preferences into front-line medical decision making. Doing so is expected to improve overall patient satisfaction with care.¹⁰ No tool will be used if it is too burdensome (too long or too difficult to understand). Instruments must be easily understood, administered, and interpreted by both clinicians and patients. No instrument is ideal for all intended uses; questionnaires are available in a variety of forms and many of these can be readily incorporated into clinical care and research. Outcomes assessment is a dynamic area, particularly as it stands at the interface between routine practice and new standards for pain assessment and treatment applied by the Joint Commission for the Assessment of Healthcare Organizations. The dissemination of ever-simpler and more powerful means to capture data electronically in everyday health care opens new opportunities for understanding which treatments are effective, and for whom, and may provide irrefutable evidence that we who treat pain add patient-centered value to the health care enterprise.http://www.york.ac.uk/inst/crd/welcome.htm..."