Endocrinologists' use of patient-reported outcome measures in the care of people with diabetes: A qualitative study

Aims: DiabetesFlex Care is a patient-reported outcome (PRO)-based telehealth service for adults with type 1 diabetes, intended to enable patient perspectives in consultations. The study aimed to explore endocrinologists' experiences of using PRO to support dialog in diabetes consultations.Methods: Thematic analysis was conducted on data from participant observations and semi-structured inter-views with 13 endocrinologists engaging in DiabetesFlex consultations at a Danish hospital-based diabetes clinic.Results: Two themes were extracted: 'Perceiving PRO as ambiguous information' and 'Integrating PRO in the care for people with diabetes'. Endocrinologists perceived PRO as situational information with variable quality and validity, depending on patient competencies and commitment. Therefore, endocrinologists used different approaches to integrate PRO in their efforts to improve care for the individual patient. The study also showed that patients' PRO-responses were rarely discussed among endocrinologists.Conclusion: Endocrinologists experienced both potentials and challenges in using PRO to support diabetes consultations. To optimize DiabetesFlex Care and similar PRO-based diabetes consultations, a culture should be built up where clinicians share experiences to improve the quality and solve PRO-related problems in con-sultations.(c) 2023 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Masson SAS. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)