Scientific research WOM

What is WOM?

“WOM is a collaborative project between Radboudumc and Johnson & Johnson that aims to develop a new measure for use in person-centered care.”

Project summary

Project WOM (work outcome measure) was developed in order to address the need for an effective measurement tool in work-oriented care. It involves interviews with experts in the field of person-centered care, a literature review and the development of the new WOM.

Aim of the project

The aim of project WOM is to develop a person-centered measure that considers the unique aspects of a patient’s personal situation and work. Existing outcome measures in work and health are mainly about the productivity of the worker. This includes measures of sickness, incapacity for work and disability. These measures can be useful, but do not account for other important factors in a patients life (quality of life, quality of work, societal participation, functioning, acceptance of and adaption to the chronic consequences of diseases). As such, there is not a measure that examines these diverse topics together to ‘capture’ the individuals current situation. This is important in the field of person-centered care. The intended use of WOM will be across different patient groups and modalities. This measure will be used to measure effectiveness of interventions, support and treatments (pharmacological and non-pharmacological). As such, this will be an invaluable tool for evaluating and advancing person-centered care.  

Our research

Researchers from the clinical occupational physician team (COP-team) at Radboudumc are talking with other experts to hear their experiences and find what topics need to be included in the new measure. Questions such as: what are common issues with study/work faced by people with a chronic disease? What existing measures do you find effective? What problems are difficult to measure in existing measures? This information will then guide a detailed literature review of existing research and tools that relevant to work-oriented care. This literature review will then feed into the development of the new WOM.