Nursing Concept Analysis

The concept of quality of life is multifaceted and a much discussed topic in the healthcare world. Providers, researchers, law makers and the general public agree that the perception of quality of life is an integral part of healthcare at large. Although it is often discussed in nursing literature, the definition of the concept is rarely defined. Some speak of the concept when referring to life saving measures that are prolonging but not necessarily improving life. Others speak about the concept when referring to courageous decisions like organ donation (Meeberg, 2008). Nurses have the ability to improve the quality of life of their patient’s on a consistent basis. Many of the nursing outcomes defined in the Nursing Outcomes Classification (NOC) system work to improve the quality of life of patients, but without a clear definition of the concept, challenges to measure the concept emerge in all settings of health care. The purpose of this concept analysis is to clear up some of the ambiguity associated with the concept of quality of life. This will be accomplished by analyzing the different ways the concept is described in all practices, including health care, defining the critical attributes of the concept, and reviewing how the concept is measured in current literature.
Use of the Concept
Medically, quality of life is described in various
The researchers in the article used the 23-item PedsQL 4.0 standardized tool to assess quality of life. The tool included scales that measured the physical, emotional, social, and school functioning of the children with epilepsy. The scale included children self-report on a scale of 0-4, and then the scores were reversed scored on a scale of 0-100 with higher numbers determining a higher health related quality of life for the