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Audit methodology: evaluating the significance of change using intrinsic and contextual data in clinical homeopathic practice
British Homeopathic Journal (2000) 89, Suppl 1, S68 ß 2000 Macmillan Publishers Ltd All rights reserved 0007±0785/00 $15.00 www.nature.com/bhj
Audit methodology: evaluating the signi®cance of change using intrinsic and contextual data in clinical homeopathic practice R Malcolm1* 1
Centre for Integrative Medical Training, 11 North Claremont Street, Glasgow G3 7NR, UK
Objective The preliminary evaluation of:
a code set for the categorisation of symptomatic change during homeopathic treatment, a scale for the measurement of clinical trends, a data collection system using these measures.
takes account of pre-treatment trends, the natural disease process and interim phenomena. The database design reduces bias by simultaneously recording: prognostic and contextual data a measure of the current status retrospective coding for interim shifts in symptomatology
Methods Many clinical outcome measures in current use are based on spot evaluations of the current state. Systems of audit which use these outcome measures frequently fail to establish a baseline, or fail to measure change against predictive trends in the patient's clinical condition. To improve the value of the existing outcome measures, an audit system has been piloted which
*Correspondence: R Malcolm, Centre for Integrative Medical Training, 11 North Claremont Street, Glasgow G3 7NR, UK.
Results Transcripts of recorded consultations have been retrospectively collated with the relevant audit data. From 3500 audited consultations, sample cases with suf®cient follow-up and adequate data-recording are presented to illustrate the data collection method.
Audit methodology: evaluating the signi®cance of change using intrinsic and contextual data in clinical homeopathic practice R Malcolm1* 1
Centre for Integrative Medical Training, 11 North Claremont Street, Glasgow G3 7NR, UK
Objective The preliminary evaluation of:
a code set for the categorisation of symptomatic change during homeopathic treatment, a scale for the measurement of clinical trends, a data collection system using these measures.
takes account of pre-treatment trends, the natural disease process and interim phenomena. The database design reduces bias by simultaneously recording: prognostic and contextual data a measure of the current status retrospective coding for interim shifts in symptomatology
Methods Many clinical outcome measures in current use are based on spot evaluations of the current state. Systems of audit which use these outcome measures frequently fail to establish a baseline, or fail to measure change against predictive trends in the patient's clinical condition. To improve the value of the existing outcome measures, an audit system has been piloted which
*Correspondence: R Malcolm, Centre for Integrative Medical Training, 11 North Claremont Street, Glasgow G3 7NR, UK.
Results Transcripts of recorded consultations have been retrospectively collated with the relevant audit data. From 3500 audited consultations, sample cases with suf®cient follow-up and adequate data-recording are presented to illustrate the data collection method.