K8 – Translating Research into Meaningful Use of Assessments in Practice

Summary

This workshop exemplifies ways to maximize the use of the assessments you already collect to inform treatment planning and progress monitoring. Too often, assessments are required by administrators or reporting agencies which are not implemented in ways which help inform individuals at the point of care. When this happens, assessments feel like an unnecessary burden to staff and individuals and the information collected suffers in quality and consistency. The burden is even greater in rural communities where assessments are often captured on paper. It is important to make sure that the individuals who contribute to and collect assessment information find value for use of the information being collected so that they invest in the quality of that information for their own goals. Nobody wins if we use valuable time to fulfill administrative requirements which are not found useful in practice. Many of the assessments we use in the field were developed and validated in research settings. While research implements measures for the sake of research, practice need implement measures for the sake of practice. The measures we found helpful in research must be transformed into tools for practice without changing the validity and reliability of the assessment itself. Research often uses measures to evaluate performance after the program is complete. However, in practice we must consider ways in which we can implement these tools to inform practice during practice. This workshop presents specific examples on different ways in which assessment information you already collect can be meaningfully used within an individual’s period of care in addition to building a knowledge base within and across programs. The workshop will discuss the use of assessments to inform level of care determination, capturing an individual’s story of need and strength, and identifying staff strengths and training needs to increase staff success and retention. The workshop will provide examples of how to test and measure effectiveness of existing level of care algorithms for success in placement. I will demonstrate how assessments can be used to visualize an individual’s story and share information across a multidisciplinary team. The workshop will explore simple approaches and solutions as well as provide an overview of more advanced data visualization and machine learning techniques, as applicable to the task.