A pilot study of an outcome measure in palliative care

In all areas of health care, including palliative care, there is an increasing demand to demonstrate the effectiveness of interventions using outcome measures. Occupational therapists have an increasing role to play in palliative care and the purpose of this study was to assess the effectiveness of the Canadian Occupational Performance Measure (COPM) as an outcome measure for occupational therapy intervention within a palliative care day unit. Twenty patients from a day unit participated in the study over a six-month period and the COPM was administered using a semi-structured interview pre- and post-intervention. The results show that the COPM focuses on the patient’s role in the intervention thereby ensuring that issues important to the patient are emphasized. However, it was noted that the concept of self-rating proved difficult to use in practice, the final scores were subjective and that interpretation using the score system alone could prove difficult.