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Any human interaction involves mutual and continually changing perceptions. Clinical judgment is the clinician’s attempt to use whatever sources are available to create accurate descriptions of the patient. These sources may include intake notes, psychometrics, observations, case history, and medical records. Clinical judgment involves data gathering, data synthesis, analysis, and interpretation. These sequential steps are parallel to the process clinicians apply when assessing a patient with the Virtual Psychology Diagnostic and Rorschach programs.

 

The clinical judgment process begins with the clinicians’ first encounter with referral data and continues through the termination phase of treatment. After collecting and organizing their data, clinicians make final judgments regarding the patient. The process involves a comparison to a base rate derived from clinical education, training, and experience. Decision-making is at the heart of clinical practice. Accurate clinical judgment forms the basis for establishing reasonable goals and selecting appropriate treatments and is essential in achieving positive therapeutic outcomes.

 

Determining the relative accuracy and reliability of these clinical judgments is crucial. Ideally, different competent clinicians conducting assessments on the same patient should formulate a similar diagnosis for the same dataset. However, research and meta-analytic finding show that clinical judgment accuracy improves only marginally with traditional education, training, and clinical experience. These consistent research findings seem to reflect the common practice of clinical judgment based on intuition and pragmatic/procedural considerations. Research findings also indicated that relatively higher rates of accuracy were achieved when clinicians used formal assessment tools with an actuarial (statistical) approach.

 

The DxP was developed to provide clinicians with a comprehensive, structured, and informed approach to the clinical judgment involved in the mental health diagnostic process. Without the employment of such methodological improvement in clinicians’ judgment, mental health professionals are on precarious ground in promoting their claim as scientist-practitioners and ethical professionals. The primary purpose of the DxP is to assist trained clinicians in the diagnosis of their patients' mental disorders, as part of the case formulation and treatment plan.