FAQ

Yes, it is. Both types of measures are filled in by a person, as opposed to a healthcare professional, to capture a person’s perspective. A PROM can only present a list of predetermined options against which an individual can rate themselves – this can create problems of suitability when a service caters for a heterogenous group of people. Not all the wording may be appropriate, not all the items listed may be relevant and relevant items may be missing. This can cause discontent with people using an outcome measure as well as with professionals who have to administer it.

A PCOM asks a person to determine the item themselves, and that is then scored and monitored. Therefore, the person using the service always gets to explain what is concerning or bothering them most. Interestingly, our research has shown that their concerns and symptoms are often different from the stated referral reasons on medical records, and different to what a healthcare professional would prioritise as most important from their medical perspective.

No, neither questionnaire has been tested in children under 14 years old.  Dr Paterson’s experience is that children of about 11 and over can use it. Younger children need a parent or carer to help them, and the results must then combine both patient and helper perspectives. In this case it is important that the same person helps the child each time. However as there has been no validation done in children then MYCaW^® or MYMOP^® may not be the best questionnaire to use.

Yes, addiction could be symptom one on MYMOP^®. It is important that it is written in a way that allows people to score it as getting better or worse; so, addiction would be OK if that was how it was experienced rather than a yes/no assessment. Alternatively, the person could use something that was a consequence of addiction, and was particularly bothering him/her, maybe the motivating factor for getting help, like 'being unable to sleep' or ' being unable to get through a day without a fix, or 'doing nothing except looking for drugs'. The principal thing is that MYMOP^® should reflect the main concerns of the patient, the main thing they want your help with.

Yes.  MYMOP^® scoring was validated against SF36 - a Health-Related Quality of Life measure which has been extensively researched and used in cancer care.   The validation showed that MYMOP^® scores were as responsive to change as the SF36 scores. MYCaW scoring was validated against FACIT-SpEx which has clear minimal important difference criteria.  MYCaW^® scoring was as responsive to change as FACIT-SpEX.  The MYCaW framework of concerns was cross-matched against items on 30 health-related quality of life items to understand how comprehensive it was.  The MYCaW^® framework of concerns captures more information than all items combined on the questionnaires reviewed and the framework is iteratively updated every 5 or so years if new client concerns are identified on a regular basis.

No, you can’t, if you do, we do not recognise them as our tool, and it becomes invalidated.  There are specific instructions on how to administer them as it was intended by its originator (Dr Charlotte Paterson).   If you are interested in developing MYMOP^® or MYCaW^® in some way, we welcome a chat about it.

MYMOP^® is a problem-specific measure. The reason that all items should relate to the same problem is that if the scores are going to be amalgamated into the profile score (the mean of the scored items) then it doesn't make sense for them to relate to different things. For example, if symptom 1 is a headache and symptom 2 is a painful toe then the intervention may cure the headache, but the toe may get worse. In this scenario the profile score would show no change, and this would not be a useful measure of treatment outcome. So, MYMOP^® is a problem-specific measure, but the patient decides what constitutes the parameters of the problem. In some cases, patients may feel symptoms are related. The practitioner's role in this scenario is to explore with the patient as to whether they are connected or if would not be responsive to the treatments being used and are therefore not appropriate to put on the form together.