2020 Volume 36 Issue 2 Pages 39-49
To improve ostomates’ quality of life (QOL), the factors impairing QOL should be identified and categorized into relevant elements. Then, an appropriate professional group of specialists can try to solve the problems, depending on the assigned element, until they are adequately resolved. We, therefore, propose the establishment of an ostomate QOL-specific outpatient clinic by a multi-disciplinary team.
This clinic is defined as an “outpatient department to specifically take care of ostomates’ QOL”. The QOL-specific outpatient system is also defined as a “system, in which a consultant group consisting of appropriate professional specialists perform the PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Action) cycle to improve the impaired QOL elements in the QOL clinic after they are identified and categorized at the conventional stoma outpatient clinic”.
In this article, this system is described, explaining the role of the conventional stoma outpatient clinic, how to use the short version of the ostomate QOL questionnaire to identify QOL problems, how to analyze each QOL element and proceed to solve the problems, and specialists/groups who are appropriate to solve them. Some future perspectives are also presented, including establishment of a society to study the QOL clinic and how to get this QOL clinic approved by the Japanese National Healthcare System.
