Sami (Papacek) Mansfield: How do YOU define quality of life?
Sami (Papacek) Mansfield, Founder, Oncology Exercise, Lifestyle Medicine Operations and Implementation Consultant, shared a post on LinkedIn about recent paper by Peter J Hoskin et al., titled “Quality-of-life outcomes in metastatic spinal cord compression: findings from the SCORAD trial” published on Journal of National Cancer Institute.
Authors: Peter J Hoskin, Krystyna Reczko, Memuna Rashid, Allan Hackshaw, Andre Lopes, SCORAD Investigators
“How do YOU define quality of life? Can you do it in 1-2 sentences? I don’t know if I could, even on my best days.
As I’ve been traveling with the Total Health asco2024 summer updates series, quality of life continues to appear regularly throughout discussions on cancer clinical treatment pathway changes and updates in treatment protocols.
To see this change should feel profound and exciting yet there seems to be some missed opportunities to define better what this means for the patients and caregivers who it really matters to.
Are we asking about what’s important to them? To feel like a human? A parent, a child, a friend, a professional?
Do we understand how cancer impacts their practical needs. Not just do they have transportation, but is it reliable, do they have grocery money or fun money?
Quality of life should not just be defined by pain scores, bowel regularity, history of falls, or minimal functional requirements. I challenge us to consider how we can ask the questions that truly help us understand the answers.
When I was on the front lines of exercise oncology, I would often hear that patients aren’t motivated to exercise. In many cases, that was true. However, when asked about what defined their quality of life and given an exercise plan that matched their goals, patients were much more motivated to exercise.
We can do better. Let’s keep asking the questions and hearing what our patients have to say. This study about QOL in spinal cord compression bonemets really got me thinking about this topic and reflecting on what we can do. Two takeaways
1. Patient desire to go home
2. QOL associated with longer life
Shouldn’t that help motivate us to keep digging, one question at a time.