Eric Atkinson
Grand Canyon University: Professional Development NRS-433V
January 11, 2015
A Fact of life for many people it the battle with a chronic disease. Coming to the understanding and accepting that there may not be a cure for the disease just methods for managing disease being available is an important factor in one’s life planning. A quantitative research study was completed, the goal being, the ability to evaluate the influence of chronic disease on major life decisions. The research lead the team to develop a validated tool, for scaling the degree of impact chronic disease could have on the life care decisions (LCD) of patient. Research described in the article was published in the August 2013 issue of “Heath and Quality of Life Outcomes.” It’s of significant value having a tool to help define the patient’s decision making rational. The reason for this are that LCD are affected by knowledge of disease, disease process and or a possible cure. A team of researchers developed a questionnaire for determining what researchers called a patients, Major Life Changing Decision Profile or MLCDP. The article states, “The MLCDP could be used in epidemiological studies as a measure of disease burden. The use of the MLCDP has the potential to compare the influence of different diseases or diseases of different specialties on MLCDs3-7” (Zaheer U Bhatti, 2013).
Providing clinician’s insight into how diseases are impacting their patients using MLCDP, would facilitate a greater individualized specific care improving the quality of care given. When used with the QoL questionnaire to measure the disease current impact on a patent the health care provider would have greater understanding for which current treatment options would be most effective for that patient. A long term cohort study using the MLCDP could identify how affected MLCDs accumulate over time (Bhatti, 2013).” Undoubtedly the MLCDP can
References: Zaheer U Bhatti, S. S. (2013, May 8). The development and validation of major life changing decision profile. Health and Quality of Life Outcomes, 78(11). doi:10.1186/1477-7525-11-78