Purpose:To develop and validate the short version (Sv) of the ostomate quality of life (QOL) questionnaire, which can be easily used in the outpatient clinic, and to investigate ostomates’ QOL with the Sv.

Methods:The Sv was based on the Revised version (Rv) of the ostomate QOL questionnaire. The number of questions in the Rv was reduced by factor analysis of previous data from a Rv study and by examining the similarity and redundancy of the Rv’s questions. The Sv was administered to 500 ostomates, and the response data were used to evaluate the Sv’s reliability and to categorize it into appropriate factors by factor analysis. The QOL scores from the Sv were compared among factors and patient background characteristics.

Results:The Sv with 20 QOL-related questions was based on the Rv with 38 QOL-related questions. Internal consistency was confirmed with Cronbach’s α (0.873). The 20 questions were categorized into 5 factors, including Fundamental, Daily life, Stoma-adaptation, Stoma-direct, and Stoma-related. The QOL score was lowest for Stoma-direct, in which inflammatory bowel disease, ileostomy, and female sex showed lower scores in this order.

Conclusion:An ostomate-specific QOL clinic is warranted to improve factor-specific QOL in individual ostomates.

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.