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Too high a hurdle? the use of pre-assessment questionnaires in psychotherapy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Terri Eynon
Affiliation:
Uffculme Clinic, Moseley, Birmingham B13 8QD
Stephen Gladwell
Affiliation:
Uffculme Clinic, Moseley, Birmingham B13 8QD
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Up to one third of patients referred for psychotherapy fail to attend for their first appointment (O'Loughlin, 1990). Psychotherapy assessments are usually allocated a considerable portion of uninterrupted time, and an unexpected non-attendance wastes significant clinical resources. A variety of strategies have been used to ensure that assessors are not left waiting for a patient who never comes. One method is to send out forms which must be completed and returned before a first appointment date is given. In O'Loughlin's study, in which a similar questionnaire to that detailed in this paper was used, it was suggested that sending a pre-appointment questionnaire reduced the default rate.

Type
Audit in practice
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists 1993

References

Feldman, M. M. (1992) Audit in psychotherapy: the concept of Kaizen. Psychiatric Bulletin, 16, 334336.Google Scholar
Holmes, J. & Lindley, R. (1989) The unjust distribution of psychotherapy. In The Values of Psychotherapy, pp. 6894. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
O'Loughlin, S. (1990) The effect of a pre-appointment questionnaire on clinical psychologist attendance rates. British Journal of Medical Psychology, 63, 59.Google Scholar
Parry, , (1992) Improving psychotherapy services: applications of research, audit and evaluation. British Journal of Clinical Psychology, 31, 319.Google Scholar
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