As a patient I certainly understand your impatience with the dreaded clipboard. And the solution you provided is a good one.
As a research consultant at Mt Sinai’ Adolescent Health Center however, I realized that intake information provides an often ignored data-base for staff to explore about who they are serving and what health and mental health issues they are facing.
Working collaboratively with non-research staff “mining” the data, we produced a book called “What do Adolescents Need to Talk About?”
True is didn’t directly help individual patients but it identified training needs and programmatic needs at the clinic. This potential informational resource is typically overlooked in health settings or when it’s used it’s by administrators for purely bureaucratic purposes.
I vividly remember staff referring to the over 800 intake questionnaires as the “data-base” when the completed intake forms were sitting uselessly in a file cabinet. At that point as true as it was, they didn’t know what they were saying.
In fact, I helped them design the intake questionnaire to help teenage applicants reflect on all aspects of their situation—not just what brought them in—and to educate them about the range of services the setting provided them.
Once completed the intake worker could review it and consider both what brought the patient in but what else they might need to talk about.
it performed those functions very well but it’s research, training and programmatic possibilities were overlooked until I asked about it
I wrote a text called “Clinical Data-Mining” published by Oxford press about this research method which I likened to “cooking a terrific meal with leftovers” but hard-core evidence-based experimentalists in the USA rejected it as not “gold standard” enough. It’s currently widely used in Australia and I’m consulting on a study going on in multiple hospitals in Melbourne now Aussies are irreverent and practical. They push back at rigid academic authority and pomposity
My research career blossomed there and still does But now I’m a memoirist working on #2
Hi Joe
As a patient I certainly understand your impatience with the dreaded clipboard. And the solution you provided is a good one.
As a research consultant at Mt Sinai’ Adolescent Health Center however, I realized that intake information provides an often ignored data-base for staff to explore about who they are serving and what health and mental health issues they are facing.
Working collaboratively with non-research staff “mining” the data, we produced a book called “What do Adolescents Need to Talk About?”
True is didn’t directly help individual patients but it identified training needs and programmatic needs at the clinic. This potential informational resource is typically overlooked in health settings or when it’s used it’s by administrators for purely bureaucratic purposes.
I vividly remember staff referring to the over 800 intake questionnaires as the “data-base” when the completed intake forms were sitting uselessly in a file cabinet. At that point as true as it was, they didn’t know what they were saying.
Great story, Irwin. Imagine if the "data-base" had even more complete and accurate info. Better data in, better insights out.
In fact, I helped them design the intake questionnaire to help teenage applicants reflect on all aspects of their situation—not just what brought them in—and to educate them about the range of services the setting provided them.
Once completed the intake worker could review it and consider both what brought the patient in but what else they might need to talk about.
it performed those functions very well but it’s research, training and programmatic possibilities were overlooked until I asked about it
I wrote a text called “Clinical Data-Mining” published by Oxford press about this research method which I likened to “cooking a terrific meal with leftovers” but hard-core evidence-based experimentalists in the USA rejected it as not “gold standard” enough. It’s currently widely used in Australia and I’m consulting on a study going on in multiple hospitals in Melbourne now Aussies are irreverent and practical. They push back at rigid academic authority and pomposity
My research career blossomed there and still does But now I’m a memoirist working on #2