Improving patient care

[Duchess123]

Hello!

As a mental healthcare professional, one of the things that I feel would be very useful to improving my patient care is to improve the collaborate care model, allowing patients more agency (aka let them navigate the ship), and improving data collection of their symptomatology over a prolonged period of time.

For all you mental health professionals out there, what do you think could improve your patient care?

In my opinion, I wish that my patients would track their moods more frequently so that I could have several data points over a prolonged period of time (as often times patients who I see monthly cannot quite remember how their moods were overall). It would be really nice to have an actual data set with mood and sleep tracking so that I can actually see if a medication is working for them or not.

So, I guess my question is, what technology do you wish we had to improve YOUR patient care and patient outcome?

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[Fan_of_Meehl]

Hello!

As a mental healthcare professional, one of the things that I feel would be very useful to improving my patient care is to improve the collaborate care model, allowing patients more agency (aka let them navigate the ship), and improving data collection of their symptomatology over a prolonged period of time.

For all you mental health professionals out there, what do you think could improve your patient care?

In my opinion, I wish that my patients would track their moods more frequently so that I could have several data points over a prolonged period of time (as often times patients who I see monthly cannot quite remember how their moods were overall). It would be really nice to have an actual data set with mood and sleep tracking so that I can actually see if a medication is working for them or not.

So, I guess my question is, what technology do you wish we had to improve YOUR patient care and patient outcome?

I try to have different levels of structure/intensity/effort treatment pathways available for the patient to choose from (I'm speaking about psychotherapy now) all the way from evidence-based manualized protocol-for-syndrome treatments, through intermediate-levels of structure and all the way down to 'little/no' structure where we're just doing motivational interviewing, socialization to the psychotherapy process and goal-setting. This way, I can constantly check in with the patient and see if they want me to dial the structure/work level up or down the scale. This way, it is always explicitly their choice and they can't(effectively) complain [though some try] that I'm either under- or over- treating them. Basically, I strive to implement the highest level of therapeutic structure that the patient will tolerate and with which they will comply and I avoid power struggles like the plague. Partially, my adoption of this approach has been the result of being forced to cope with working at a VA where it is effectively impossible to unilaterally terminate with a psychotherapy patient.

 

[gyngyn]

This thread can be followed here: Improving patient care