Rod, Paul, Paul & Others,
thanks for your comments and references.
Manualising and other techniques for more specificly describing
interventions has been discussed extensively in the clinical psychology
literature (let me know if you want a couple of references). I heard
recently that back in 1980s Cogntive Therapy and Research refused to publish
an RCT unless the authors made a treatment manual available.
I'm interested to get some feedback about some other ideas to promote the
definition and access to non-proprietary and procedural interventions.
I have wondered about the benefits of some form of dictionary, glossary or
taxonomy of interventions where a definition of procedures could be easily
found and links made to more detailed resources for implementation (a
manual?) training and supervision. There are existing resources that do
such things in other areas (perhaps a pharmacopea?). Both MESH and the
Psycinfo subject headings have the bare bones of such a glossary.
Encouraging clinicans who write treatment manuals to make them freely
available (such as under the GNU copyleft licence) might make the more
detailed procedures more easily accesable. An alternative is to try an work
out how trademarking or copyrighting interventions can improve quality
control and access to those interventions instead of restricting access.
I have assumed that there would be an evidence threshold in both these
cases. It irritates me no end to read of a new technique being tested in a
case series, then to find out the author is on a speaking tour where their
new book is being touted. (and its lucky there is a published case series!)
Paul Glasziou pointed out that this also applies to herbal medicines. The
best example for me was a picture of the wrong plant apearing next to Linde
et al's 1996 meta-analysis of the effects of St John's Wort in BMJ (P. J
Houghton, St John's wort for depression,BMJ, November 9, 1996; 313(7066):
1204b - 1205.)
thanks again for your feedback.
Andrew
|