Professor Simon Rogers explains how the PCI works for Head & Neck Cancer Patients in an outpatient clinic setting as well as future developments for other clinical specialities and patient groups.
The PCI-H&N can be used in head and neck oncology out-patients clinics as part of a H&N cancer specific holistic needs assessment. It acts as a memory prompt to help patients address the issues that are important to them during the consultation. The PCI-H&N is completed just before to the consultation and allows patients to choose from a list of 56 items or issues that they would specifically like to mention or discuss at their consultation. The items are grouped together into five domains: physical and functional well-being (29 items), treatment related (3 items), social care and social well-being (9 items), psychological, emotional and spiritual well-being (14 items), other (1 item which is free text). Ideally each item identified by the patient should be discussed but if there are too many items selected it might be prudent to ask the patients to choose their top three or four priorities for that clinic or make arrangements for a longer consultation.