IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0162422.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Development of Clinical Vignettes to Describe Alzheimer's Disease Health States: A Qualitative Study

Author

Listed:
  • Mark Oremus
  • Feng Xie
  • Kathryn Gaebel

Abstract

Aims: To develop clinical descriptions (vignettes) of life with Alzheimer’s disease (AD), we conducted focus groups of persons with AD (n = 14), family caregivers of persons with AD (n = 20), and clinicians who see persons with AD in their practices (n = 5). Methods: Group participants read existing descriptions of AD and commented on the realism and comprehensibility of the descriptions. We used thematic framework analysis to code the comments into themes and develop three new vignettes to describe mild, moderate, and severe AD. Results: Themes included the types of symptoms to mention in the new vignettes, plus the manner in which the vignettes should be written. Since the vignette descriptions were based on focus group participants’ first-hand knowledge of AD, the descriptions can be said to demonstrate content validity. Conclusion: Members of the general public can read the vignettes and estimate their health-related quality-of-life (HRQoL) as if they had AD based on the vignette descriptions. This is especially important for economic evaluations of new AD medications, which require HRQoL to be assessed in a manner that persons with AD often find difficult to undertake. The vignettes will allow the general public to serve as a proxy and provide HRQoL estimates in place of persons with AD.

Suggested Citation

  • Mark Oremus & Feng Xie & Kathryn Gaebel, 2016. "Development of Clinical Vignettes to Describe Alzheimer's Disease Health States: A Qualitative Study," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(9), pages 1-15, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0162422
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0162422
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0162422
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0162422&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0162422?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0162422. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.