Poster Presentation Clinical Oncology Society of Australia Annual Scientific Meeting 2026

Co-designing prostate-specific patient-reported outcome measures to support person-centred adaptation of the NSW Patient Reported Measures Program (142935)

Steph Walker 1 , Mollie Cahill 2 , Gabrielle Tiernan 2 , Bogda Koczwara 2 , Geoff Delaney 3 4 5 , Natalie Taylor 1 5 , Carolyn Mazariego 2
  1. Implementation to Impact (i2i), School of Population Health, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, Australia
  2. Australian Research Centre for Cancer Survivorship, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, Australia
  3. School of Clinical Medicine, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, Australia
  4. Radiation Oncology, Liverpool Cancer Centre, Sydney, NSW, Australia
  5. Cancer Clinical Academic Group, Sydney Partnership for Health, Education, Research and Enterprise (SPHERE), Sydney, NSW, Australia

Aims: Routine use of patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) improves earlier identification of symptoms and unmet needs and reduces adverse events. In NSW, a government-led Program supports the collection and integration of PROMs into routine care. Symptom and distress PROMs, generic to all cancers, are currently used and have supported standardised Program roll-out. However, they lack the specificity needed to capture concerns related to tumour types and their treatment modalities. We aimed to identify patient and clinician priorities for incorporating prostate-specific PROMs into the current NSW Program.

Methods: A co-design workshop was conducted with people affected by prostate cancer and clinicians. Participants discussed benefits and limitations of generic and prostate-specific PROMs, priority domains for inclusion and timing across the care continuum.

Results: Participants supported using prostate-specific PROMs to improve the relevance, person-centredness, and clinical usefulness of the NSW Program. Priority domains included urinary, bowel and sexual function, hormonal symptoms, relational and supportive care needs. Participants emphasised that physical side effects of treatment and psychosocial impacts are interconnected and should not be assessed as isolated PROMs. Prostate-specific PROMs were considered valuable before treatment decision-making to establish baseline concerns, with assessment continued during active treatment and survivorship, when priorities and unmet needs may change.

Conclusions: Adapting the NSW Program to include prostate-specific PROMs may improve person-centredness and support earlier identification of unmet needs. However, the value of tumour-specific PROMs depends not only on the measures selected, but also on clear supportive care resources, referral options and response pathways that enable services to act on patient-reported concerns.