The Self-administered Comorbidity Questionnaire (SCQ): A New Method to Assess Comorbidity for Clinical and Health Services Research

Abstract

Introduction:

Comorbidity is the occurrence of one or more disease with the existence of one indexed disease. Comorbidity is associated with deteriorated physical function, reduced health-related quality of life and work participation outcome. Measures of comorbidity typically use information from the medical record or administrative data. However, it imposes limitations such as incomplete medical records, poor quality of documentation, along with its high cost. The alternative is using a self-administered measure of comorbidity for clinical and health services research settings. It allows subjects to note the severity of each comorbid condition and their perceptions of its impact on their daily routine.

Objective:

To assess the type and number of comorbidities among pharmacy department staffs in Miri Hospital, and the impact of the comorbidities on their daily working performance.

Methods:

This is a cross-sectional study involving 50 staffs from the pharmacy department in Miri Hospital. We adapted the Self-administered Comorbidity Questionnaire (SCQ) along with questions regarding demographic information for data collection. The SCQ addressed 14 body systems with two binary questions regarding the occurrence of health-related conditions and whether they received treatment or medication in everyday life.

Results:

A total of 50 pharmacy staffs of Miri Hospital participated in this survey study. None of the baseline characteristics (age, gender, race and working experience) had significant association with comorbidities. The majority reported back pain as one of the comorbidities experienced (52.8%) followed by others such as hypertension, lung diseases and depression and their presence is of statistically significance (p=0.001) towards working performance of the participants.

Conclusion:

SCQ is a promising instrument to determine comorbidities and to understand the impact on working performance in pharmacy personnel of Miri Hospital. Comorbidities, particularly back pain, are observed to impact the working performance significantly and hence, more measures are necessary to prevent poor working performance in the future.