I’m a school school psychologist and have been frustrated with the lack of opportunity for teachers to give feedback to physicians regarding the effectiveness of medication and other treatments. I try to encourage parents to request the information from teachers. I often provide a “daily chart” that allows the teacher to rate 3 or 4 behaviors that she has prioritized. This data is available for the physician to review.
Additionally, I use the BASC TRS and PRS to gather data from parent and teacher regarding a variety of issues. Too often, the common characteristics of attention problems or impulsive behaviors are symptoms of other problems such as anxiety, depression, disorders of mood, ODD, and conduct disorders.
I use this approach as part of my contribution to “pre-referral activities” and general education intervention. This data is included in my comprehensive evaluation, if the student is referred for special education consideration. If the parents are interested in consulting with their physician, then I encourage them to share my written report with the doctor.
I am sure that large hospitals and mental health centers have someone on staff to coordinate, collect, summarize, and share this data with the physician. However, the family physician is probably at a disadvantage. I would like to pilot a service that would provide needed information to the physician. Decisions regarding mediaction effectiveness would be based on feedback from the parent and teacher. Others such as the student or therapist could be included in this model. Below is brief summary of my idea.
[b]Treatment Management Systems[/b]
Treatment Management Systems will provide a practical, convenient, and effective system to obtain information from parents, school staff, and medical staff regarding the effectiveness of a student’s treatment plan during the school year. The staff at Treatment Management Systems will be responsible for obtaining and providing feedback to all parties involved in the treatment plan. By doing so, appropriate decisions regarding continuation or adjustments in treatment can be made based on input from a variety of sources. Doctors need feedback from teachers and parents. Parents need feedback from teachers regarding changes in student behavior/performance. Teachers need the opportunity to provide feedback to parents and physicians regarding changes in student behavior/performance. Treatment Management Systems will coordinate these efforts throughout the school year.
I welcome feedback from parents regarding this idea.
Steve
[email protected]
Monitoring Effectiveness of Medication Treatment: Part II
Thanks for your response. As I stated in the original post, many of the teachers that I have worked with over the last ten years have complained that no one ever asks for their feedback. If you are interested, I can share some of my material with you. The documents are written in MSWord and can be attached to an email.
[email protected]
Re: Monitoring Effectiveness of Medication Treatment: Part I
[quote=”scrunyon”] If you are interested, I can share some of my material with you. The documents are written in MSWord and can be attached to an email.
[email protected][/quote]
I am interested in any information you have to share. I think your idea is great. My email address is:
[email protected]
I do see a need for teacher feedback regrading the useful of medication as part of the treatment plan. However, in our experience, most teachers do not want to be a partied to determining the need for medication or the need to adjust medication, whether that be up or down. What I have personally done is to simply ask the teacher about the areas/symptoms the meds are supposed to be targeting. I would imagine that as the government continues to become more involved in our decision to medicate our ADHD kids by forbidding the schools to utter the “M” word, as in medication, teachers will find themselves unable to even consider that medication or medication adjustment might be required for proper, successful treatment.
Good luck with your system.