Background: Children and healthcare professionals should be provided with easy-to-use tools which could lead to actionable results.
Objectives: There is increasing interest in the use of patient reported outcomes to aid management of individual care; therefore, the use of health-related qualityof life (HRQOL) assessments during consultations need to be studied. The aim of this study was to explore how healthcare professionals use a HRQOL assessment tool during paediatric encounters.
Design: A descriptive, explorative design with a qualitative approach based on video recordings was chosen.
Methods: Twenty-one video recordings, from nine different healthcare professionals’ consultations where an assessment tool of HRQOL were used were analysed by content analysis.
Results: The healthcare professionals were using different strategies and when they combined these strategies three approaches emerged. The instructing approach was characterized by healthcare professionals giving a summary of the results, leading to children becoming passive bystanders in the encounter. Based on an inviting approach, the children’s perceptions of their situation were requested while the items were explored. This resulted in involving the children in the conversations. In the engaging approach, an open dialogue and a common interpretation were sought to guide further care which was interpreted as children becoming actively involved.
Conclusions: The child’s involvement could be facilitated depending on which approach is being used. When an inviting and engaging approach is used, actions in a non-linear set of interactions is co-produced with the child.
Relevance to practice: The use of an HRQOL assessment tool change the management during consultations and could promote child involvement dependent on which approach the healthcare professionals are using.