Quality of life measurement and alcoholism: Another arm to nursing practice?

Research across a number of disease-states has shown there is some discrepancy between how clinicians and “patients” rate their life situation. Thus it is important to assess the subjective views of the “patient”/client when evaluating the clinical effectiveness. There is now a body of work that attempts to do this under the heading of Quality of Life/Health-Related Quality of Life. In the field of alcohol dependency these types of study are in their comparative infancy. Quality of life (QoL) can be measured using condition-specific or generic tools (which can be used across different disease states). An attempt has been made to design an alcohol-specific QoL (Al-Qol-9) measure but it still needs a great deal of work before it can adequately capture the QoL of alcohol dependent individuals. This paper provides some pointers to the issues future QoL studies need to address. It concludes by suggesting how QoL measurement can be integrated into nursing research and clinical practice.