Quality of Life Measures in Health Care

Paper Summary:

This paper examines the use of quality of life measures in health care. Topics covered include: How quality of life is determined, the criteria assessed and who determines the criteria. The political and ethical implications for patient care are also discussed. The paper concludes that despite the ethical concerns and poor quality of measurement related to quality of life indices, they are indeed being used today to make both political and clinical decisions across a wide variety of medical conditions and situations. The paper includes articles referred to in the text.

From the Paper:

"Several ethical issues are associated with quality of life measures, the first and most important one being whether any decisions should be made using quality of life considerations given the very serious limitations regarding data accuracy. In other words, if clinicians can't trust that they have measured what their instruments purport to measure in an accurate and stable manner, why would they even want to make any decisions using these measures as a foundation? And if they do make decisions on the basis of such measures, the question of whether such decisions are ethical or moral must be raised."

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