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Measuring symptoms is part of every clinician's work, hence this
chapter is not aimed only at specialists. The challenge is to
better measure these often neglected but vital aspects in care,
in order to benefit clinical practice, research, and education.
Epidemiological methods can improve the way that symptoms are
assessed, discussed, recorded, and evaluated after treatment,
and have the potential for improving patient and family care.
There are
many priorities for future work in this relatively neglected area.
Below are three which we consider to be particularly urgent.
Invest
in research to find ways to better capture and describe symptoms.
The methods should be quick, clinically relevant, and may be
important in helping to assess the best treatments for some
of our most difficult-to-manage symptoms, such as breathlessness.
Introduce
systematic evaluation and repeat evaluation of symptoms into
clinical practice. This might aid the detection of symptoms
and improve the dialogue between patient and clinicians about
symptoms.
Invest
in and test ways to efficiently capture and analyse symptom
assessment data. This might help clinicians review their practice
and allow the comparison of symptom management in different
settings and over time in order to identify most successful
patterns of treatment and to generate hypotheses for future
research.
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