Outcomes research in urology

Excerpt

Defining outcomes research is not a simple task. Despite its growth over the past several decades, it has been surprising difficult to classify. As noted by some outcomes researchers, the term “outcomes research” is commonly used, but its meaning is less clear [1]. For many of us, outcomes research falls under the larger umbrella of health services research (HSR), primarily because many of the earliest efforts to study outcomes were closely associated with the development of health services research as a discipline. For others without an HSR background, it is more ubiquitous and may have connections to other lines of research such as clinical epidemiology, clinical trials, or more general areas of clinical research miscellany. …