Dimensional measure of self and interpersonal functioning: Comparisons with treatment alliance and readiness for inpatient psychotherapy.

The social cognition and object relations scale-global rating method is a clinical rating system assessing 8 domains of self and interpersonal functioning. It can be applied to score numerous forms of narrative data. In this study, we investigate the SCORS-G relationship to measures of alliance and readiness for psychotherapy with an adolescent inpatient sample. Seventy-two psychiatrically hospitalized adolescents were consented and subsequently rated by their individual and group therapist using the SCORS-G. The unit psychiatrist also completed an assessment of patients' readiness for inpatient psychotherapy. The patients completed a self-report of their alliance with the inpatient treatment team as a whole. SCORS-G ratings were positively correlated with assessments of readiness for inpatient psychotherapy and patient-reported alliance. This study further demonstrates the clinical utility of the SCORS-G with adolescents.

Reducing Patient No-Shows: An Initiative at an Integrated Care Teaching Health Center.

BACKGROUND: Patient no-shows impede the effectiveness and efficiency of health care services delivery. OBJECTIVE: To evaluate a 2-phase intervention to reduce no-show rates at an integrated care community health center that incorporates a teaching program for osteopathic family medicine residents. METHODS: The Elmont Teaching Health Center (ETHC) is 1 of 5 community-based health centers comprising the Long Island Federally Qualified Health Centers. In August 2015, the ETHC implemented a centerwide No-Show Rates Reduction Initiative divided into an assessment phase and implementation phase. The assessment phase identified reasons most frequently cited by patients for no-shows at the ETHC. The implementation phase, initiated in mid-September, addressed these reasons by focusing on reminder call verification, patient education, personal responses to patient calls, institutional awareness, and integration with multiple departments. To assess the initiative, monthly no-show rates were compared by quarter for 2015 and against rates for the previous year. RESULTS: We recorded 27,826 appointments with 6147 no-shows in 2014 and 31,696 appointments with 5690 no-shows in 2015. No-show rates in the first 3 quarters of 2015 (range, 18.2%-20.0%) were slightly lower than the rates in 2014 (20.1%-23.4%) and then changed by an increasingly wide margin in the last quarter of 2015 (15.3%), leading to a significant year (2014, 2015) by quarter (Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4) interaction (P=.004). Also, the change observed in Q4 in 2015 differed significantly from Q1 (P=.017), Q2 (P=.004), and Q3 (P=.027) in 2015, while Q1, Q2, and Q3 in 2015 did not significantly differ from one another. CONCLUSION: No-show rates were successfully reduced after a 2-phase intervention was implemented at 1 health center within a larger health care organization. Future directions include dismantling the individual components of the intervention, evaluating the role of patient volumes in no-show rates, assessing patient outcomes (eg, costs, health) in integrative care settings that treat underserved populations, and evaluating family medicine residents' training on continuity of care and no-show rates.

Reliability and Validity of Prototype Diagnosis for Adolescent Psychopathology.

The current study investigated the interrater reliability and validity of prototype ratings of 5 common adolescent psychiatric disorders: attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, conduct disorder, major depressive disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, and posttraumatic stress disorder. One hundred fifty-seven adolescent inpatient participants consented to participate in this study. We compared ratings from 2 inpatient clinicians, blinded to each other's ratings and patient measures, after their separate initial diagnostic interview to assess interrater reliability. Prototype ratings completed by clinicians after their initial diagnostic interview with adolescent inpatients and outpatients were compared with patient-reported behavior problems and parents' report of their child's behavioral problems. Prototype ratings demonstrated good interrater reliability. Clinicians' prototype ratings showed predicted relationships with patient-reported behavior problems and parent-reported behavior problems. Prototype matching seems to be a possible alternative for psychiatric diagnosis. Prototype ratings showed good interrater reliability based on clinicians unique experiences with the patient (as opposed to video-/audio-recorded material) with no training.

Hurricane Sandy: Shared Trauma and Therapist Self-Disclosure.

Hurricane Sandy was one of the most devastating storms to hit the United States in history. The impact of the hurricane included power outages, flooding in the New York City subway system and East River tunnels, disrupted communications, acute shortages of gasoline and food, and a death toll of 113 people. In addition, thousands of residences and businesses in New Jersey and New York were destroyed. This article chronicles the first author's personal and professional experiences as a survivor of the hurricane, more specifically in the dual roles of provider and trauma victim, involving informed self-disclosure with a patient who was also a victim of the hurricane. The general analytic framework of therapy is evaluated in the context of the shared trauma faced by patient and provider alike in the face of the hurricane, leading to important implications for future work on resilience and recovery for both the therapist and patient.

Determining adolescents' suitability for inpatient psychotherapy: utility of the clinician-rated Readiness for Inpatient Psychotherapy Scale with an adolescent inpatient sample.

Growing economic pressure on inpatient services for adolescents has resulted in fewer clinicians to provide individual psychotherapy. As a result, inpatient treatment trends have favored group psychotherapy modalities and psychopharmacological interventions. Currently, no clinician-rated measures exist to assist clinicians in determining who would be able to better utilize individual psychotherapy on inpatient units. The current study sought to demonstrate the utility of the Readiness for Inpatient Psychotherapy Scale with an adolescent inpatient sample. This study also used the RIPS as it is intended to be used in everyday practice. Results from the authors' analyses reveal that the RIPS demonstrates good psychometrics and interrater reliability, as well as construct validity.

Assessing overall functioning with adolescent inpatients.

The current study sought to evaluate the validity and reliability of a brief measure of overall functioning for adolescents. Clinicians were asked to complete the Overall Functioning Scale (OFS) for 72 adolescents consecutively admitted to the adolescent psychiatric inpatient service of a community safety net medical center. The results revealed that this new measure is related to the patients' length of stay, clinician-rated measures of social cognition and object relations, Global Assessment of Functioning (GAF) score at admission, as well as global rating of engagement in individual psychotherapy. The results also showed that the OFS was related to the patients' history of nonsuicidal self-harm as well as treatment outcome as assessed by measures of psychological health and well-being as well as symptoms. Hierarchical regressions reveal that the OFS shows incremental validity greater than the admission GAF score in predicting length of stay. The results also showed that the OFS demonstrates interrater reliability in the excellent range (intraclass correlation coefficient(1,2)) of 0.88. Clinical implications of the use of this tool and areas of future research are discussed.