Reliability and validity of the EORTC QLQ-C30 in palliative care cancer patients

• Authors: Hubert Jocham , Theo Dassen , Guy Widdershoven , Ruud Halfens
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

Palliative care aims at improving the patient’s quality of life. The assessment of this quality of life (QoL) is crucial for the evaluation of palliative care outcome. Many patients require hospital admissions for symptom control during their cancer journey and most of them die in hospitals, although they would like to stay at home until the end of their lives. In 1986, the European Organization for Research and Treatment (EORTC) initiated a research programme to develop an integrated, modular approach for evaluating the quality of life of patients participating in international clinical trials. This questionnaire measures cancer patients’ physical, psychological and social functions and was used in a wide range of clinical cancer trials with large numbers of research groups and also in various other non-trial studies. The aim of this study was to evaluate the psychometric properties, especially the reliability, validity and applicability of the EORTC QLQ-C30 in a German sample of terminally ill cancer patients receiving palliative care in different settings. The questionnaire was well accepted in the present patient population. Scale reliability was good (pre-treatment 0.80) especially for the functional scale. The results support the reliability and validity of the QLQ-C30 (version 3.0) as a measure of the health-related quality of life in German cancer patients receiving palliative care treatment.

Keywords

EN

EORTC QLQ C30; Health-related quality of life; Palliative care; Cancer; Nursing research

• Publisher: De Gruyter Open
• Journal: Open Medicine
• Year: 2009
• Volume: 4
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 348-357

Dates

published

1 - 9 - 2009

online

3 - 7 - 2009

Contributors

author

Hubert Jocham

• Palliative Care Expert, Head of the Home Care Akademie, 88085, Langenargen, Germany

author

Theo Dassen

• Department of the Nursing Science, Humboldt University of Berlin, 13353, Berlin, Germany

author

Guy Widdershoven

• Faculty of Health Sciences and Scientific, Care and Public Health Research Institute (CAPHRI) Universiteit Maastricht, 6211 Maastricht, Maastricht (Limburg), The Netherlands

author

Ruud Halfens

• Health Care Studies Section Nursing Science, Faculty of Health Sciences, Universiteit Maastricht, 6211 Maastricht, Maastricht (Limburg), The Netherlands

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Identifiers

DOI

10.2478/s11536-009-0032-7