3 July 2019 - It used to be that if we wanted to assess a patient’s back pain, we would evaluate how far the patient could bend by measuring the distance between the patient’s fingers and the floor. 

Adverse effects of a drug were evaluated by collating clinicians’ impressions. The outcomes of many trials of mental health were obtained by counting hospital readmissions. We went into medicine to help patients feel better, but rarely asked how anyone was feeling at all.

Patient-reported outcomes first started to displace physician assessments in clinical research in the 1970s and 1980s. Instead of asking patients on a back pain trial to bend and twist, we now give them questionnaires that ask about their pain, symptoms, and function. In mental health trials, patients complete questionnaires about mood. In recent years, we have seen a similar shift in routine clinical practice.

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