There is much use of the phrase ‘Evidence Based Practice’ in the NHS. The evidence is often obtained from randomised, double blind, clinical trials performed by clinicians working very strictly to a formalised treatment protocol. As clinical hypnosis is tailored to an individual, who also very often has multiple problems, this may not be very relevant to the delivery of service in a normal clinical setting. One way forward is the development of ‘Practice Based Evidence’.
The use of audit is absolutely vital in the improvement of standards and outcomes. It can serve many functions:
To inform the therapist in the treatment of an individual
Demonstrating variations between different therapists in treating different conditions
To inform a department of its overall outcome results
Comparison with other departments
Comparison of psychological therapy with psychotropic medication
Many audit/evaluation tools are complicated, expensive to purchase a licence to use and need to be registered with the issuing body.
When time is short we need simple tools that can be used easily and that demonstrate a benefit of our therapy. It is almost impossible to get even the briefest of case reports published without including some data.
The Society wishes to encourage members in collecting audit data so that many individual cases pooled together will carry much greater weight, in order to present some meaningful data to bodies such as NICE on the treatment of various conditions – if you would like to take part in this project please contact National Office. Depending on the response we will focus on specific conditions and elect a member to co-ordinate this with help from National Office and the R&D team.
You may already use some form of audit tool but we suggest that you consider the following either in addition or instead of your usual outcome measures:
