The Cancer Research UK Clinical Centre Leeds has an active research program in psychosocial and clinical research. The main interest is in patient centred assessment in clinical practice including evaluation of quality of life, psychosocial morbidity and social problems.

This project seeks to expand and optimise the application of standard questionnaires in clinical practice. The hypothesis is that using formal implementation strategies to introduce routine touch-screen computer measurement of HRQL in oncology practice will have benefits for patients and physicians.

The specific aims are:

• to explore and address what oncologists want from HRQL measures and evaluate the benefits to clinical practice from using an improved questionnaire package;
• to develop and evaluate a staff training program in interpretation and response to HRQTL data in clinical practice.

The use of prospective randomised clinical studies to evaluate the hypotheses is central to this work. Initially, exploration of what doctors want Cram HRQL data will be performed using focus groups. Based on the identified needs, a package of questionnaires will be designed and tested in a prospective pre-test/post-test study with randomisation of patients. The training programme for clinicians will be evaluated in a separate study involving randomisation of doctors.

The expected outcomes from this proposal are improvements in medical care and patient well-being during cancer treatment.