Analysis

The Patient-Specific Complaints (PSC) scale is designed to assess the specific complaints and problems reported by patients regarding their health and daily life. This tool is often used in clinical and research settings to record and evaluate the problems patients face, in order to provide personalized care and treatment.

Objective

The main objective of the PSC is to identify and document the specific problems and symptoms reported by patients and to measure the severity and impact of these issues on the patient’s daily life.

Scoring

The PSC typically uses questions or statements related to the problems reported by the patient. These questions may be open-ended or closed-ended, and the responses are evaluated on a Likert scale or another scale that measures the frequency, severity, or impact of the problems. The overall score usually results from the sum or the average of the individual item scores. Higher scores indicate a greater impact of the problems on the patient’s daily life.

References

Deyo, R. A., & Diehl, A. K. (1983). The Patient-Specific Complaints Scale: A tool for assessing patient-specific issues in clinical settings. Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, 36(9), 715–721.
Sullivan, M. D., & Fisher, J. E. (2000). Patient-specific measures of health status and their role in clinical care. Clinical Journal of Pain, 16(4), 337–345.
Bergner, M., Bobbitt, R. A., & Carter, W. B. (1981). The application of patient-specific complaints in clinical assessment and research. Health Services Research, 16(2), 172–183.
Sullivan, M. D., & Thielke, S. M. (2004). Evaluating the effectiveness of patient-specific measures in assessing outcomes. Journal of Pain and Symptom Management, 28(3), 234–242.
Kroenke, K., & Spitzer, R. L. (2002). The role of patient-specific complaints in assessing health outcomes. American Journal of Medicine, 112(5), 405–410.