Summarizing clinical psychiatric data

The authors propose a method of summarizing clinical data to serve patient care. The proposed one-page summary uses diverse visual presentations of data, including small graphs for ratings and drug dosages, time lines for clinic visits and hospital stays, and genograms for inherited illness, as well as a textual presentation of recent clinical notes. The summary depicts a patient's recent and lifetime clinical experience. It allows the viewer to assess relationships between interventions and outcomes for psychiatric and medical problems. Computerized patient information systems, which are increasingly being used, can present data in virtually any form. The authors hope to encourage mental health professionals to reshape psychiatric records.