Patient-reported outcome measures describe how individual patients perceive their illness, health, and overall life situation. These measurements include both health-related quality of life and functional ability.
Patient-Reported Outcome Measures (PROM)
The generic instrument RAND-36 is used to assess health-related quality of life and includes eight domains:
- physical functioning (PF)
- role functioning due to physical health (RP)
- role functioning due to emotional problems (RE)
- social functioning (SF)
- mental health (MH)
- vitality (VT)
- bodily pain (BP)
- general health (GH)
Functional ability is assessed through questions related to activities of daily living (ADL).
According to the Swedish Intensive Care Registry (SIR) guidelines for post-intensive care follow-up, patients with a length of stay of 48 hours or more should be followed up at two and six months after discharge from the intensive care unit (ICU). At these follow-up visits, patients are given access to their individual results from the measurements, which can serve as a basis for support, advice, and potential interventions.
Through the SIR website, it is also possible to access aggregated data reported by intensive care units in Sweden. The available data include factors such as gender, age, results from RAND-36, functional ability (ADL), and interventions performed in patients who have been followed up. The data are presented at group level, but specific selections can be made to generate more detailed reports. PROM results are also presented in the Post-ICU Follow-up report.
Nursing Care and Quality Monitoring
Nursing care has a significant impact on healthcare outcomes, both for the individual patient and at a broader system level. It is therefore important to systematically measure and evaluate nursing care in order to improve and develop healthcare services.
Guidelines for quality indicators in nursing care have been published. The first variables in SIR used to measure nursing care are pain, sedation, and delirium. Results will be reported once sufficient data have been collected.