Strengths and weaknesses

Strengths

• It is patient-centred and aims to measure the outcomes that the patient considers the most important
• It is applicable to any problem, provided this can be defined by the patient in terms of symptoms. This makes it especially useful in settings where patients have a wide variety of problems.
• It is brief, which increases its feasibility and acceptability, and leads to high response and completion rates. It also makes it popular with practitioner-researchers.
• The patient’s own words are used, which avoids conflicts over diagnosis. This makes it especially useful for multidisciplinary care.
• Validation studies have included patients of both orthodox and complementary practitioners
• It’s simplicity, in terms of structure and scoring, makes it easy to chart the scores of individual patients over time. This makes it especially useful in case studies.
• It is very responsive to change.

Weaknesses

• The first time that MYMOP is completed, the patient requires some structured guidance. This makes it unsuitable for postal administration on the first occasion.
• It is problem specific. This makes it unsuitable for patients who cannot identify a ‘most important problem’. It also means that treatment effects that are not related to the chosen problem will not be measured, except as they effect wellbeing.
• The seven-day timescale makes it unsuitable for infrequent episodic problems such as migraine and menstrual problems.
• The individualised nature of MYMOP makes it unsuitable as a basis for economic evaluations.