What is it?
‘Life after prostate cancer diagnosis’ is a patient reported outcome measures (PROMs) project, designed to identify the outcomes of prostate cancer diagnosis and treatment that really matter to men across the UK. The research will help us understand what men think about the treatments that they received and their effectiveness, how their quality of life changes as they live with prostate cancer and the consequences of treatment over time, and how these health outcomes compare to a wider group of men without prostate cancer.
The expert team of researchers leading this project will be working with the national cancer registries to build a robust dataset that will complement other related initiatives and seek to link to a variety of NHS data now available. This will help practitioners and the public to understand far more about the factors that influence men’s perceptions of their outcomes, including the treatment that they receive, their cancer stage, and the setting in which they were treated.
The results of this project should help you, as clinicians, to further plan and develop effective treatments and ongoing care in a way that is both clinically successful, and reduces the negative consequences that some men experience to their quality of life and day to day function. The results of the research will help shape the wider debate about how patient reported outcomes can be used to drive improvements in patient care by identifying gaps where the needs of men and their families are not being met.