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Communicating with clients about treatment outcomes: the use of meta-analytic evidence in collaborative treatment
1Department of Occupational Therapy, Sargent College of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, Boston University, MA 02215, USA.
Abstract:
The purpose of this article is to describe how therapists can use information from the research literature, specifically from meta-analyses, to inform clients and their family members about probable outcomes of participating, or not participating, in treatment. Meta-analyses are particularly useful to clinicians because they summarize findings from a large number of outcome studies in a rigorous, comprehensive, and concise format. The quantitative presentation of meta-analyses may be daunting to those who are not familiar with meta-analytic procedures and statistics. Therefore, this article describes a simple method for making clinically relevant interpretations of meta-analytic results. Furthermore, specific examples that are based on actual meta-analyses are given as models for communicating with clients and their family members about treatment outcomes in order to facilitate collaboration during treatment planning.