Patient-Reported Outcome Measures in the Emergency Department: A Scoping Review

Patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) are increasingly utilized to support clinical care by capturing health status from the patient's perspective. Although the application of PROMs in an emergency department (ED) context is expanding, their scope remains poorly mapped. This scoping review aims to identify and characterize the PROMs used to assess the health status of adult patients in the ED in the initial clinical evaluation, with focus on supporting clinical decision-making and developing individual care and treatment plans.

A systematic literature search was conducted using the MEDLINE, Embase, CINAHL, and PsychINFO databases to identify studies utilizing PROMs in ED settings published between January 2000 and February 2025. The review was performed in accordance with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) Extension for Scoping Reviews and the Joanna Briggs Institute guidelines.

The review identified 173 unique PROMs, within the literature utilizing measurement properties. The most prevalent themes were mental health, substance use, and older people; whereas, PROMs for general conditions remained relatively scarce. Twenty-three studies detailed the development of new PROMs, whereas 22 studies described the adaptation of existing PROMs for the ED setting. Notably, most of the identified studies and PROMs were employed primarily for research purposes, with limited emphasis on providing direct clinical feedback.

The predominance of research-oriented PROMs underscores a potential gap in translating these measures into clinical practice. Furthermore, the findings suggest that most existing PROMs focus on identifying specific patient vulnerabilities, pointing toward a relative scarcity of tools designed to assess general medical conditions in the ED.