Improving Cancer On-treatment Symptom Management

Patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) is an umbrella term that refers to any report on a health status measure that is reported directly by the patient, without the influence of clinicians or anyone else. PROMs have been shown to more closely reflect a patient's daily health status when compared to physician-reported measures. However, research is needed to evaluate if patient symptom reporting during definitive-intent radiotherapy allows earlier and improved detection of treatment toxicity, and leads to individualized interventions which may improve the toxicity outcomes for patients with locally-advanced and oligometastatic cancer. The investigators hypothesize that routine physician review of PROMs during on-treatment visits will (1) increase proportion of patients with an increased in their physician' s assessment of their overall toxicity burden during definitive radiotherapy, and (2) correspondingly increase the proportion of patients receiving physician-directed interventions for treatment-related symptoms. The IMPROVE pilot study will describe the proportion of patients with cancer with changes in physician-perception of treatment-related toxicity that result from routine physician review of PROMs reported during definitive radiotherapy. The IMPROVE study will also describe (1) the proportion of patients with changes in the management of treatment-related symptoms and (2) the type of management changes that result from routine physician review of PROMs reported during definitive radiotherapy.