THE FRANKFURT CHILD AND ADOLESCENT-PSYCHI ATRY DOCUMENTATION SYSTEM -ASPECTS OF DEVELOPMENT, METHODOLOGY, AND CLINICAL-QUALITY ASSESSMENT

Measures to ascertain qualified work in child and adolescent psychiatr y have become a great necessity, because of increasing financial press ures and changing laws. One basic measure should be a documentation sy stem, which should include reliable basic data on the patient, standar dized data of the psychopathological status and the latest version of the Multiaxial Classification System (MAS). The second chapter gives a brief overview of the historic development of documentation systems i n psychiatry resp. child and adolescent psychiatry. Only very recently a trend toward a generally binding standardization has emerged. The t hird chapter describes the general methodological principles of clinic al documentation. Finally, the Frankfurt Child and Adolescent Psychiat ry Documentation System is presented, Psychiatry Documentation System is presented, which has been developed between 1987 and 1993 at the De partment of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry of the Frankfurt Universit y School of Medicine. It is presently used in several german universit y hospitals. It consists of a six-part documentation sheet, a detailed glossary and a special computer program for data entry and data admin istration. It includes sociodemographic and anamnestic data, the psych opathological and somatic status, diagnostic assessment for the MAS an d data on therapeutic measures and treatment outcome. The computer pro gram, which can be used on any IBM-compatible PC, allows easy data inp ut on the screen, controls distribution of case numbers, plausibility of important core data and ongoing security copies. The possible use o f the documentation system for clinical quality assessment is discusse d.