COMPASS

Integrating Patient Reported Outcomes into Clinical Practice

Aims

The COMPASS Collaboration brings together a diverse group of researchers and clinicians from different disciplines and a wide range of locations. It builds on a long-standing joint programme of work between research groups based in Edinburgh, Leeds and King’s College London. The overall aim is to forward research in supportive and palliative cancer care. The work is organised into three inter-related strands, two of which are being carried out in Leeds.

COMPASS Strand 1

Strand 1 focuses on the development of accurate and efficient methods of assessing patients using IT techniques to support this where appropriate. The work is centred in Leeds and has begun with the assessment and measurement of emotional distress. A systematic search of the literature has produced five categories of papers for review. The first of these will investigate how patient self-report measures of emotional distress compare to standard criteria at different points in the cancer trajectory.

COMPASS Strand 2

Strand 2 is concerned with the development and evaluation of effective treatments for emotional distress, and is centred in Edinburgh. The Leeds contribution to this strand of work is the development of a national survey of oncologists and oncology nurses to determine how they detect and manage emotional distress in their daily clinical practice. The work is being conducted in three phases beginning with a qualitative scoping study followed by a pilot survey leading finally to a full national survey of healthcare professionals in the United Kingdom.

COMPASS Strand 3

Strand 3 will examine ways of improving the working lives of the cancer care workforce which will, in turn, improve the quality of care for cancer patients. It will also evaluate approaches to training health care professionals to deliver supportive and palliative care. This work is centred in King’s College London with a contribution from the Edinburgh centre. At present no Strand 3 work is being conducted in Leeds.