Health Related Quality of life

Health related quality of life is a multidimensional construct representing the broad concepts of individual patient opinions about their physical, psychological and social functioning. It is best suited for general epidemiological studies that investigate global health, combined with the nuances of diseases as seen in diabetes, osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, pregnancy,  cancer and other large scale disease that impact quality of life.

the foot health status questionnaire

A focused region specific patient reported outcome measure (PROM) of foot health quality of life designed in the shadow of generic HRQoL measures.

To improve precision of data to clinicians and reduce unnecessary information collection, the FHSQ has a more specific focus on the domains of foot pain, movement capacity base on biomechanical foot function, patients footwear needs based on structure, function and commercial footwear availability and a domain of  patients self perception of foot health.

The self perception domain captures a more wholistic sense of why patient present for clinical care. Patients who may respond in part to treatment may have unresolved issues about what they think will happen, has trouble understanding instructions, or doesn’t follow recommended treatment. These issues have been shown to impact patient’s health and diminish treatment effectiveness and need to be noticed by the clinician, which is why this domain is included.

The link between general health related quality of life and general foot relate quality of life cannot not be over emphasised. It’s the gap between what you do based on your understanding, and what the clinician can do better based on accurate patient centred care.

Its an amazing domain that opens clinical enlightenment into why, we as practitioners turn up ever day and leave the clinic within overwhelming sense of gratification. Its not just about “pain and function”, but about how we connect meaningfully with patients about their lives.

THE iCONNECT VERSION

A secure cloud based version of the FHSQ with several new clinical indices to guide daily clinical practice. The system contains international reference ranges, library of conditions, short and longer term measures of treatment impact, educational resources and a bibliography of published scientific articles using the FHSQ.

All data is produced by patients making it a truly patient centred test that clinicians can readily access.

The goal of fhsq-iconnect framework is to integrate 25 years of peer reviewed research from around the world and integrate this this work to daily workflow of clinical practice.