Vital Sign 6 Reflection

Depression is a Disease and according to the World Health organization it is the largest cause of disability worldwide. For most, depression is seen as a personal weakness or feeling sorry for oneself. Subsequently, people find it difficult to ask for help. My father is one of those people. Throughout my life, he has struggled with depression. He lost his father to suicide at the age of 10 and it completely changed his life. As his son, I have been a witness to his very real struggle. I have seen the man I hold in such high regard brought low by his own fight with this disease. Over time, my father has worked hard to get a pretty good handle on his depression but he still struggles with it and will continue to do so for the rest of his life.

My team and I overcome various barriers for patients and clinics on a daily basis such as connecting patients to appropriate referral resources and keeping patients on track with our care coordination program. However, our greatest challenge was implementing the program with one of our new pediatric partners. Implementing Vital Sign 6 requires a multitude of tasks to be completed before we begin. My colleagues and I had to reshape our program to better fit this pediatric clinic and that provided a large obstacle. Some of those changes included validating measure for a pediatric population and the tailoring of our treatment program children. This program is primarily used with adult patients but children under the age of 18 are just as prone to depression as their adult counterparts and often require the same level of attention. This project requires consultation with various experts in the field of Psychiatry. My team and I work with various psychologists and psychiatrists to generate a new and improved model for this pediatric

After an hour long debate, no decisions were made on the screening package yet many felt the issue had been resolved. To rectify the various misunderstandings, I tailored a more individual report for each person. Some of my colleagues are visual learners, some prefer information presented in text, and others wanted figures and flow charts. I used these preferences to generate my model summary for each individual person. After demonstrating the pros and cons for the various plans in their own best learning style, my colleagues quickly came to the conclusion that my model proposal would hold the greatest benefits to patients, while not overwhelming them or the providers. After a consensus was reached, I brought the new program model to the clinic and quickly began training clinic staff and providers on measurement based care for depression treatment. This second phase was even more challenging than the first because I had to find a way to fit this new model into the clinic workflow. Eventually we were able to build a clinic workflow that incorporated our new program model while still maintaining clinic