For mental health clinicians
Involving consumers
Involving consumers in the National Outcomes and Casemix Collection (NOCC) involves clinicians:
- planning - the offering of the self-assessment; how they will give feedback; how they will utilise the measures in planning care
- explaining the measures collected both clinician-rated and consumer-rated
- actively engaging in dialogue about the clinician-rated measures and what that means for planning care
- providing consumers (and carers) with information (verbal and written) about the self-assessment measure to enable informed decision about participation
- communicating the value of the self-assessment process and addressing consumer concerns
- actively engaging in dialogue with consumers about their completed slef-assessment measure
There are a range of resources available to you to support this process including:
 Opportuntities in practice: outcome measurement in mental health (PDF file 7.41mb) - provides strategies, principles and techniques for using consumer outcomes in clinical practice. In particular have a look at section 2.2 Engaging consumers.
What do the HoNOS/CA/65+ item ratings mean? (PDF file 70kb)
About BASIS-32® Behaviour and Symptom Identification Scale Questionnaire Brochure (PDF file 515kb)
Your life…your health…your voice! - Information sheet and detachable BASIS-32® form – this form is only available to services licensed to use the BASIS-32®
Consumer self-assessment
Consumer self-assessment is an integral component of the OM process in mental health. Offering a self-assessment measure can be useful for engagement as well as collaboration between consumers, carers and clinicians. Also, discussion of self-assessment ratings with consumers (and where appropriate with carers) can enrich treatment and care planning. Self-assessment provides the opportunity for consumers, carers and clinicians to track progress through comparison of ratings over time. The incremental nature of progress can sometimes be difficult to monitor without measurement tools.
As a general rule, the consumer self-assessment measure should always be offered according to the protocol unless contra-indications are present. The offering of the consumer self-assessment measure must be recorded on the CMI. Completion by the consumer is always voluntary. Clinicians need to consider how they will explain OM concepts to consumers and carers, as well as how they will provide specific feedback. There are a number of training materials available to assist clinicians with this process. Clinicians need to be familiar with the consumer self-rated measures. When offering the consumer self-assessment, it is important to explain why it is being offered and how the information will be used.
Translations
The Department of Human Services has commissioned translations of BASIS-32® into a number of community languages. Clinicians should also consider using interpreters to assist culturally and linguistically diverse consumers to complete the BASIS-32®. The translated copies cannot be posted on the Department of Human Services website due to licensing requirements; however, translations on CDs have been provided to all adult services and may be available on your local intranet.
Translations of the SDQ were undertaken by Goodman and are not consistent with the English version mandated by NOCC. In particular, the question that seeks an overall opinion and the perception of other informants (teachers and or parents) opinions on the young person's behaviour are the major difference e.g. PC1 questions 36, 37 and 38. The differences are significant with the Parent SDQ covering 4-16yrs where NOCC versions cover 4-10 and 11 -17yrs. It is unclear how appropriate the translated versions are and should be used with caution because of limitations for accurate entry into CMI. There are currently no plans to translate the measure nationally and it would require agreement from Goodman.
Training
OM ratings can be made by any mental health professional that has been trained in their use including the application of relevant glossaries and rating guidelines.
All mental health professionals who will be involved in OM are expected to participate in agency-level basic training in relevant OM suites. All mental health professionals are also strongly encouraged to undertake regular refresher training.
The nationally agreed suites of outcome measures correspond with the broad age groupings in use across the area-based mental health service system in Victoria. In addition to the clinical applicability and psychometric properties of the individual measures, each suite was chosen for its relative ease of administration and because the measures require minimal training.
Training of clinicians in Victoria is provided using a Train-the-Trainer model to ensure that each mental health service maintains local training capability to provide ongoing training for new staff as well as refresher training for existing staff.
As OM is now an integral part of clinical practice in all services, it is expected that all mental health professionals undertake OM training. While it is conceivable that some clinicians will not have direct responsibility for rating the measures at agency level, they will still need to be familiar with the measures and understand their relevance to clinical practice, treatment planning and review.
The following resources are useful to ensure that OM ratings are used in practice:
Top of page
|
