Documentation Templates

What is your style of documentation?  Do you often track the frequency of specific behaviors?  Do you use rating scales?  Or maybe you prefer documenting with narration.  DocuMT can support all of those styles of documentation.  Once you identify the domains to include in your template ( fine motor, affect, receptive communication etc.) you can chose to document within that domain using a therapist identified rating scale, frequency count, narration or any combination.  

It may seem a bit odd/limiting at first to use rating scales for documentation.  The DocuMT system bases its rating systems on numeric values so that you can better track your participant's progress over time.  It is important to not be think of these numeric ratings as 'grading' your participants.  

As an example, imagine that you currently use a list of descriptors to illustrate your participant's affect.  It may not be immediately obvious how a numeric scale maps to specific behaviors.  That is, it may not be 'better/appropriate' to have a 'bright' affect as compared to a 'flat' affect, but listing such descriptors on a numeric scale allows you to more easily see how your participant's affect has changed (or trended) over time.  You can also use additional descriptive language.  For example, this is one rating scale I use to track affect:

0 - Appears asleep through most or all of session

1 - Mostly flat or blunted affect

2 - Somewhat limited range of affect

3 - Demonstrates an appropriate range of affect, changing in response to music and interaction

Both frequency count and rating scales will include an optional narrative field, allowing me to further describe the participant's response such as "Betty demonstrated a bright affect through most of today's session, but was notably tearful during the song 'Moon River.'  She expressed to the therapist that the song reminded her of dancing with her husband."

If you're not sure if your current documentation style will fit into DocuMT's system - ask us!  I bet we can make it work!!

DocuMT continues to grow and improve!  One idea we would like to implement in the future is the ability for therapists in the system to share their documentation templates with each other, so stay tuned for that!  Let us know if you think this would be a good idea in the feedback!