Patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) are reported by the patient and designed to capture patients' unique perspectives of their symptoms, quality of life, function, disability, and overall health status. Despite their important role in the health care landscape, it is important to recognize that PROMs have numerous shortcomings. These include weaknesses in the development of tools and interpretation of scale values, which can lead to variable patient reporting and dissimilarities in study results, potentially influencing the effectiveness of findings. This Viewpoint makes recommendations for how to interpret and best use PROMs, in spite of their shortcomings. J Orthop Sports Phys Ther 2021;51(12):562-565. Epub 16 Nov 2021. doi:10.2519/jospt.2021.10836.
Keywords: content validity; interpretability; outcome measures.