Paliatívna medicína a liečba bolesti 1/2011

Various approaches in studying the quality of life in dying patients and possibilities of its investigation using Mc Gill questionnaire

This study describes subjective as well as objective approaches towards the problematics of measuring the quality of life in untreatably ill or dying patients. Its investigation part describes applicability of Mc Gill Quality of Life Questionnaire in palliative care in accordance with the reliability results and validity of the test. In our research, the following Cronbach’s Alpha results of internal consistency were achieved: the whole B and C scale (questions 1 – 16) α = 0.86, physical symptoms (questions 1 – 4) α = 0.70, psychological symptoms (questions 5 – 8) α = 0.94, existential items (questions 9 – 14) α = 0.75, social support (questions 15 – 16) α = 0.81. We can say that psychological, existential and support quality of life significantly correlate and all the aspects together correlate with quality of life at importance level p < 0.01. Physical quality of life interacts moderately with overall quality of life. The scale used by patient for global measuring quality of his life (part A) acts, as the author determined, as variable of validity and correlates, in our study, with obtained overall quality of life at r = 0.420.

Keywords: quality of life, dying, measurement of the quality of life.