PRMs Collaborative Conversation Series - Gabrielle Cehic

Associate Professor Gabrielle Cehic

Gabrielle Cehic
Asso­ciate Professor

Affil­i­a­tion: SA Health-South Aus­tralia Med­ical Imag­ing (SAMI), Uni­ver­si­ty Of South Australia.

Gab­by is a Nuclear Med­i­cine Physician/​Oncol­o­gist and Clin­i­cal Lead South Aus­tralian PRRT Service.

Q&A with Gabby

What inter­est­ed you about patient report­ed mea­sures research and/​or projects?

As a Med­ical Oncol­o­gist, I have always had an inter­est in ensur­ing we bal­ance the ben­e­fits of ther­a­py against tox­i­c­i­ty so that we can ensure patients live their best lives. 

The use of Patient Report­ed Out­come Mea­sures (PROMs) has empow­ered our patients to hon­est­ly and com­plete­ly describe a range of symp­toms that impact their qual­i­ty of life in ways we nev­er ful­ly appreciated.

In a time poor clin­ic, when patients are like­ly to down­play their symp­toms, and clin­i­cians may not want to hear those symp­toms, PROMs pro­vide an oppor­tu­ni­ty for patients to more com­plete­ly voice the impacts of the dis­ease and treat­ment on their life and allow­ing the clin­i­cian the best oppor­tu­ni­ty to address same.

What is your biggest achieve­ment in rela­tion to patient report­ed mea­sures research, or the appli­ca­tion of research into practice?

At a state lev­el, our biggest achieve­ment has been the Imple­men­ta­tion of a data reg­istry for patients with Neu­roen­docrine neo­plasms (NENs) who receive Pep­tide Recep­tor Radionu­clide Ther­a­py, (PRRT). Includ­ed in this reg­istry is an online sur­vey tool for the dig­i­tal entry of spe­cif­ic val­i­dat­ed PROMs ‑EORTC QLQ 30 (gen­er­al can­cer PROM) and GiNET 21 (dis­ease spe­cif­ic PROM).

We are indebt­ed to both The Hos­pi­tal Research Foun­da­tion (THRF) and CAL­HN Ethics – the spon­sors of RED­CAp™ ( Research Elec­tron­ic Data Cap­ture) — for fund­ing and sup­port­ing this registry.

How do you approach col­lab­o­ra­tion with con­sumers, car­ers and com­mu­ni­ty? Or how do think we can work togeth­er to keep mak­ing advance­ments in this space?

I believe that col­lab­o­ra­tion and co-design with con­sumers is cru­cial in design­ing path­ways. At TQEH we part­ner with con­sumers and car­ers on a reg­u­lar basis by involv­ing them in all aspects of their treat­ment plan­ning and deliv­ery. For exam­ple in the process of imple­ment­ing our dig­i­tal PROMs tool ​‚we formed a con­sumer group that advised us on a process for those that did not feel con­fi­dent deal­ing with elec­tron­ic entry of data. We thus main­tained an alter­nate ana­logue path­way to ensure an inclu­sive process for all our patients to report their PROMs.

Con­tact Gabby

View oth­er pro­files in the PRMs Col­lab­o­ra­tive Con­ver­sa­tion Series.