Development of case vignettes to assess the mental health training of primary care medical officers

Abstract

This article reports the development of case vignettes as a method of assessing the short-term in-service training of primary care medical officers in mental health care. A pool of 18 case vignettes representing common psychiatric problems and a standard response sheet were written first. This was mailed to 45 psychiatrists for their comments. Based on the comments received from 21 psychiatrists, 2 sets of questionnaires with 7 vignettes in each set were developed. When administered to a group of 32 medical officers, this method of assessment was found to be sensitive in detecting gain in knowledge and skills following training. Further, performance on case vignettes was found to correlate positively with clinical skills when actual cases were given for assessment.

Effectiveness of a training programme for primary care physicians directed at the enhancement of their psychiatric knowledge in Saudi Arabia

“…Two examples of the questions are: (1) ''atypical antipsychotics include all except one: (a) clozapine, (b) risperidone, (c) olanzapine, (d) haloperidol'' and (2) ''the treatment of depression includes all the following except one: (a) antidepressants, (b) lithium, (c) electroconvulsive therapy, (d) diazepam''. As in other recognized surveys (Sriram et al, 1990), a clinical vignette was used for each domain, except for childhood disorder. Questions answered wrongly were scored 0 whereas questions answered correctly were scored 1.…”

A systematic process for creating and appraising clinical vignettes to illustrate interprofessional shared decision making

“…For many years, clinical vignettes have been seen as a useful tool for continuing professional development (Mettes et al, 2010). Despite the popularity of vignettes and their use in a variety of settings, little is known about the way they are developed or validated except in other fields such as behavioral and social sciences (Campbell, Ford, Campbell, & Quinkert, 1998;Cazale et al, 2006;Pham et al, 2009;Piano et al, 2013;Sriram et al, 1990).…”

Mental Health Knowledge and Skills of General Hospital Nursing Staff: an Exploratory Study

“…These four vignettes included those of epilepsy, schizophrenia, anxiety neurosis and mental retardation. These vignettes too, were developed based on a similar assessment procedure being used to evaluate medical officers (Sriram et al 1990b). The vignettes provided brief written descriptions of the problems.…”