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The Child Consultation Rating Scale
1Department of Psychiatry, University of California, Davis.
Insights
This study introduces a new rating scale for assessing child psychopathology in hospital settings. The scale demonstrates reliable results, aiding in the training of pediatric and psychiatry residents.
Area of Science:
- Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
- Clinical Psychology
- Pediatric Healthcare
Background:
- Assessing psychopathology in pediatric patients within high-acuity hospital settings presents unique challenges.
- Existing assessment tools may not adequately address the complexities of family dynamics and rapid patient turnover.
Purpose of the Study:
- To introduce and evaluate a novel consultation psychopathology rating scale.
- To provide a systematic method for assessing psychopathology in pediatric patients and their families.
Main Methods:
- Development of a rating scale comprising consultation, patient, and parent variables.
- Inclusion of global ratings and DSM-III-R diagnoses for children and parents.
- Pilot testing with sixty pediatric patients and thirty controls.
Main Results:
- The scale demonstrated significant interrater reliability across all variables (p < .05 to p < .001).
- Pilot findings support the scale's utility in a tertiary care, general teaching hospital.
Conclusions:
- The developed rating scale is a reliable tool for assessing pediatric psychopathology in complex hospital environments.
- The scale offers valuable applications for training pediatric and psychiatry residents in systemic observation.
Abstract:
A consultation psychopathology rating scale is described for use in assessing psychopathology in pediatric patients and their families in a tertiary care general teaching hospital setting with high acuity and rapid patient turnover. The scale is composed of twelve consultation variables, thirty patient variables, and fourteen parent variables. It includes a global rating and a DSM-III-R diagnosis for both parent and child. Pilot findings using the scale are described for sixty pediatric patients and thirty controls. Interrater reliability using Kendall nonparametric correlations between raters was obtained for each variable and achieves significance ranges from p less than .05 to p less than .001. Applications to training pediatric and psychiatry residents in the systemic observation of child psychopathology are discussed.
