The Development of a Novel Wellness Assessment Instrument and Its Use in the Assessment of Wellness Status in Patients With COPD

Abstract

Background:

It is believed that underlying the current state of health (HRQL) is the lifestyle status of the patient. However, other factors such as spiritual well being and psychological, mental and motivational status may be at least as important as others but understudied. This research describes an attempt to validate a new wellness assessment questionnaire and to identify and investigate the status of several wellness domains in patients with COPD.

Methods:

The study consisted of two phases: first, the development of a new Wellness Questionnaire with the help of focus groups and then the validation and use of the questionnaire in a cohort of COPD patients.

Results:

Thematic analysis of findings from focus groups and original cohort respondents highlighted some factors that appear to influence wellness status. Five domains were explored as potential markers of wellness in patients with COPD, including spirituality. Quantitative analysis with Spearman correlation demonstrated a significant correlation between Physical/Personal Wellness as recorded by the questionnaire and other markers of COPD progression such as GOLD (0.006), kg/m² % (0.01), health-related quality of life (0.009), multidimensional BOD score and quartile (0.003 and 0.02).

Conclusions:

This study led to the development of a new (Sunderland) Wellness Respiratory Questionnaire (SWRQ) to assess wellness status in patients with COPD and the observation that wellness status may have an influence on disease progression.