Scholarly Saturday- Measuring Treatment Failures/Successes
While on vacation, I actually was able to read a lot of blogs, tweets, and Facebook pages. Although I am gathering as many successful resources as I can, there a lot of stories about system/treatment failures. I began to search for scholarly articles on treatment failure. One highlight, out of a lot of scholarly articles, was the work of Shimokawa, Lambert, and Smart (2010). They utilize “Outcome Questionnaire-45” to survey patients at various points about the therapeutic process. It appeared that giving the survey and feedback had a positive impact on treatment.
As with most scholarly articles, it comes with flaws, but the notion of using a scale to measure how things are progressing makes sense. I am always making a point to “check in” with clients and families about my work but perhaps using something more formal might enhance things. I will look for more of these and present it for “Tools for Practice Tuesday”. If anyone has one of these scales that they are already using please feel free to share it in my comments section.
Shimokawa, K., Lambert M.J., and Smart, D.W. (2010) Enhancing Treatment Outcome of Patients at Risk of Treatment Failure: Meta-Analytic and Mega-Analytic Review of a Psychotherapy Quality Assurance System. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, Vol. 78, No. 3, 298–311.
link to article: http://www.safranlab.net/uploads/7/6/4/6/7646935/shimokawaetal.2010.jccp.pdf
