Patient Reported Outcome Measures (PROMs) assess the quality and results of care or treatment from a service user’s perspective.
It could be that our support has helped someone lead a more fulfilling life, reduced or stopped any symptoms they may have had, or helped them back into employment or education.
Outcome measures help us to understand a person’s needs and develop meaningful relationships and interventions based more entirely on their goals.
They can be really useful in prompting conversation about certain aspects of treatment and recovery. And help to show how different factors can affect the impact and outcome of treatment.
The outcome measures have been developed based on research evidence and recommended for us to use by NHS England and the Royal College of Psychiatrists.
Within adult community mental health services, we use three PROMs. These are:
- DIALOG : A simple set of 11 questions that help plan care around what truly matters to the service user
- Goal Based Outcomes (GBO): These focus on what the service user wants to achieve and get out of their care and support. And measures progress towards these identified goals.
- Recovering Quality of Life (ReQol-10): Ten questions about quality of life, and how this is linked to the service user’s recovery.
DIALOG is a simple set of 11 questions that service users do before, or during, their appointments.
The questions help health care professionals to have a supportive and meaningful conversation with service users about parts of their lives that are important to them such as relationships, family, job and leisure activities as well as their mental and physical health and treatment.
The service user rates their experience in response to each of the questions on a scale of one to seven – with seven being ‘totally satisfied’.
DIALOG puts the service user at the centre of the conversation. And supports discussing the things that are going well and the things which might need more attention.
Using the ratings given, the health professional and service user create a care plan exploring and addressing identified problems and finding solutions. The plan will be clear, easy to understand and specific to the individual service user. The care plan will be easy to change and updated regularly as agreed with the service user.
The Goal Based Outcome (GBO) tool is used to track and evaluate progress towards goals.
It compares how a person feels they have moved towards reaching a goal they have set for themselves during their care planning.
The measure is on a scale between zero and ten. ‘Zero’ means the goal is not met. ‘Ten’ means the goal is met.
This outcome measure is made up of ten user-friendly questions that focus on areas of quality of life that are important to the service user.
This could include wellbeing, physical health, meaningful activity, belonging and relationships.
What are the benefits of using PROMs?
We know that sometimes there can be lots of forms to fill in, especially if someone is just starting treatment.
But PROMs don’t rely on service users having to write lots of information. They’re very simple, short user-friendly assessment exercises that include scores that can be easily calculated and interpreted.
They’ve also been developed with service users, aiming to capture the service user’s views.