Clinicians' perspective on quality of life assessment in paediatric clinical practice

This study was undertaken to investigate paediatric clinicians' views on and use of quality of life (QoL) assessment in clinical practice.

A survey was conducted among members of the Dutch Paediatric Association via e-mail.

Over half of the 303 respondents (57%) believed that it was possible to use QoL questionnaires in clinical practice. The majority indicated that assessing QoL was beneficial and that it was especially necessary to assess QoL in children with a chronic disease (82%). Although only a minority (17%) currently used QoL questionnaires, most respondents would want to use QoL questionnaires in the future (76%). Obstacles that prevent the use of QoL questionnaires are the extra time needed for assessment, the unavailability of standardized questionnaires and insufficient knowledge about QoL.

This survey shows that paediatric clinicians are positive towards QoL assessment, but that certain obstacles prevent the use of questionnaires. Thus, to facilitate future use, QoL questionnaires need to be developed from the perspective of the paediatrician. This means that they need to be developed for clinical use and brought to the attention of the paediatric health care community, demonstrating their validity to child health care.