Ana Carvajal defends her thesis doctoral dissertation in Sheffield
The professor of the School of Nursing of the University of Navarra has done research on assessment of symptoms for patients with cancer and receiving palliative care.
Ana Carvajal, Professor of Palliative Care at the School of Nursing and Hospitalization Nurse at Clínica Universidad de Navarra, defended her doctoral thesis last February at the University of Sheffield (UK).
Her doctoral work had as goal to develop a version at Spanish of a test of assessment of symptoms for patients with cancer and receiving palliative care. The test is called the Edmonton Symptom assessment Scale (ESAS) and although it is widely used in other countries it was not available at Spanish. The questionnaire assesses in a simple way the patient's perception of ten common physical and psychological symptoms. It has been widely used in many countries both on the clinical internship and on research.
In the Spanish version of the test, the most appropriate terms for assessing depression, anxiety and asthenia when using a visual numerical scale have been accurately chosen. In the Spanish validation study, the symptomatology of nearly 300 patients was examined and, through the analysis of their scores on the ESAS, it was found that the Spanish instrument has excellent psychometric properties, to the point that in some aspects it surpasses the properties of the original English version.
The 'ESAS' is routinely used in the Clinic in patients with advanced disease who receive support from the Palliative Medicine Unit. programs of study From now on, it can also be used in many other centers in Spain and Latin America, which will allow us to carry out a comparative study on symptomatology between these countries and others that already had versions of ESAS in their own language.