Patient-Centred Outcome Measures for Major Surgery (P-COMMaS)
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Patient-Centred Outcome Measures for Major Surgery (P-COMMaS): A mixed methods study to identify important outcomes for patients undergoing major surgery
IRAS ID
217554
Contact name
Tania West
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University College London (UCL)
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 8 months, 1 days
Research summary
Why?
This study is about defining important outcomes for patients having major surgery. It addresses one of the ‘Top Ten priorities’ for perioperative research from the recent UK-wide Anaesthesia and Perioperative Care Priority Setting Partnership: ‘What outcomes should we use to measure the 'success' of anaesthesia and perioperative care?’
What?
Every year, almost ten million operations are performed in the UK. Most go well, but 10-15% of patients suffer medical complications, and 1-3% are fatal. Even the operations that ‘go well’ may not be completely successful from the patient’s viewpoint – but we don’t know if we’re collecting the right outcome data, because we’ve never asked surgical patients which outcomes matter to them.
Who?
Any adult patient with experience of major surgery (i.e. any big operation requiring hospital admission), plus carers and clinicians with experience of caring for major surgery patients, will be eligible.
Where?
A purposive (non-random) sample of patients, carers and clinicians will be approached through hospital outpatients, GP practices, patient groups, surgical and anaesthetic professional bodies, and social media.
How?
A short survey and in-depth interviews will be used to explore participants’ views about outcomes after major surgery.
1) The survey will ask participants to rate some commonly used post-operative outcome measures on a scale of 0-10, and to suggest other outcomes they consider important.
2) Survey respondents will be invited to have a telephone interview to explore their experience of surgery in greater depth. Interviews will be ‘semi-structured’, i.e. the precise questions are not fixed, but seek to explore participants’ views about the following:
• How do they evaluate the results of major surgery?
• Which factors do they consider when making decisions about surgery? How do they come to their decisions?
• Which ‘outcomes’ after major surgery do they most care about?REC name
East Midlands - Derby Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
17/EM/0096
Date of REC Opinion
2 Mar 2017
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion