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Although investigators have advocated “measurement-based care” for depression, clinicians continue to resist the routine use of rating scales. In two reports, a research team recently examined the use of such scales in U.K. general practices, which receive incentives to use them.
In a qualitative study, researchers interviewed 34 general practitioners and 24 patients. Patients had generally positive attitudes toward the scales, seeing them as helpful adjuncts to medical judgment and their use as an indication that their depressive symptoms were taken seriously. Physicians felt that scales were inferior to clinical judgment, possibly reducing the holistic, “human” element of their interactions.
The other study examined physician behavior regar…