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In early stages of injury, athletes better able to report quality of life than athletic trainers
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PHILADELPHIA—Shortly after sustaining a musculoskeletal injury, patients were generally better able to describe their health-related quality of life than their athletic trainers, especially with regards to their mental health, according to a presentation at the National Athletic Trainers’ Association 2010 Annual Meeting & Clinical Symposia here.
Alison Snyder, PhD, ATC, of A.T. Still University and colleagues sought to determine the association between patient-reported health-related quality of life (HRQOL) and proxy reporting by clinicians. Prior studies have shown that patients are the best evaluators of their HRQOL, whereas proxy assessments by physicians, nurses and family members were modest in their evaluations.
Scholastic sport injuries
A total of 50 patients were included in the study. All had sustained musculoskeletal injuries during interscholastic athletics. Their average age was 15.7 years. Ten clinicians, all athletic trainers of the injured patients, were also included. HRQOL was recorded initially and at day 30.
To evaluate HRQOL, clinicians used the Athletic Training Outcomes Assessment and patients completed the Medical Outcomes SF-36 and the Pediatric Outcomes Data Collection Instrument.
In the early stages of the injury, HRQOL as recorded by clinicians did not correlate to patient-reported HRQOL. However, in the later stages of injury management, clinicians appeared better able to evaluate HRQOL, especially when dealing with the physical component.
Mental assessment
Clinicians generally rated mental health as poor during the early and later stages of injury management, corroborating findings that proxies are better equipped to diagnose observable physical dimensions rather than subjective emotions.
Snyder concluded that athletic trainers are not strong evaluators or HRQOL, and that meaningful HRQOL evaluation must be completed by patients used self-reported outcome measures.
Reference:
- Snyder A. A comparison of clinician-rated and patient-rated health-related quality of life following sport-related musculoskeletal injury. Presented at the National Athletic Trainers’ Association 2010 Annual Meeting & Clinical Symposia. June 22-25, 2010. Philadelphia, Pa.