Quality of life (healthcare)
These are often multidimensional and cover physical, social, emotional, cognitive, work- or role-related, and possibly spiritual aspects as well as a wide variety of disease related symptoms, therapy induced side effects, and even the financial impact of medical conditions.
IADLs, as defined by the American Occupational Therapy Association (AOTA), are “Activities to support daily life within the home and community that often require more complex interactions than those used in ADLs”.
[10][11][12] Elderly patients taking more than five medications increases risk of cognitive impairment, and is one consideration when assessing what factors impact QoL, ADLs, and IADLs of older adults.
OTs are trained to complete a person-centered evaluation of an individual's interests and needs, and tailor their treatment to specifically address ADLs and IADLs that their patient values.
In the AOTAs most recent vision statement (2025) they explicitly state that OT as an inclusive profession works to maximize quality of life through the effective solution of participation in everyday living.
[20] To address this issue, researchers have developed new instruments for measuring end-of-life HRQoL that incorporate factors such as sense of completion, relations with the healthcare system, preparation, symptom severity, and affective social support.
In the case of chronic and/or terminal illness where no effective cure is available, an emphasis is placed on improving health-related quality of life through interventions such as symptom management,[44] adaptive technology, and palliative care.
Another example of why understanding quality of life is important is during a randomized study of 151 patients with metastatic non-small-cell lung cancer who were split into obtaining early palliative and standardized care group.
Research has shown that evaluating an elderly person's functional status, in addition to other aspects of their health, helps improve geriatric quality of life and decrease caregiver burden.
[46] Research has also shown that quality of life ratings can be successfully used as a key-performance metric when designing and implementing organizational change initiatives in nursing homes.
[49] Recently, a first step for a joint international consensus statement for measuring quality of survival for patients with childhood cancer has been established.
While measuring tools can be a way to scientifically quantify quality of life in an objective manner on a broad range of topics and circumstances, there are limitations and potential negative consequences with its utilization.
Quality of life measuring tools can also promote a negative and pessimistic view for clinicians, patients, and families, especially when used at baseline during the time of diagnosis.
Quality of life measuring tools can fail to account for effective therapeutic strategies that can alleviate health burdens, and thus can promote a self-fulfilling prophecy for patients.
On a societal level, the concept of low quality of life can also perpetuate negative prejudices experienced by people with disabilities or chronic illnesses.
[53][unreliable medical source] The degree of recalibration varies due to factors based on the individual area of investigation and length of study.
Norman et al. proposed health-related quality of life surveys use a half standard deviation as the statistically significant benefit of a treatment instead of calculating survey-specific "minimally important differences", which are the supposed real-life improvements reported by the subjects.
