Historically, I have always used clinical measures to measure Outcomes; but my reason for using them goes way beyond simply demonstrating how effective the treatments might be. After all, why would I be using any treatment (CBT or other) if I didn’t know they were effective?

The main reason I use them, and the main reason I ask you to use them when enrolling on this CBT for Tinnitus process, is repeating the measures gives you evidence that what you are doing is benefiting you.

This is particularly helpful when you repeat two of them (TFI & ASQ) the first time on completing Stage 4, the full set of measures at the end of Stage 6, and then towards the end of the process during the final Stage 8.

Before you have COMPLETED THE WHOLE PROCESS, you haven’t reached where you need or want to be in terms of how you are and how you feel about tinnitus. It is easy to fall in to a trap of thinking “I think I might be a bit better than I was, but I’m still not there yet” which psychologically – and emotionally – can result in “All or nothing” thinking and undermine how you feel about the progress you have in fact made to date.

When we have been struggling with something – as people have invariably been doing with tinnitus when they enrol on the course, it is all too common to have thoughts that undermine you. Thoughts like “It might work for others, but it probably won’t for me”, or “I must admit I have been feeling better than I was this past week, but it probably won’t last”.

It is NORMAL to be thinking like this when you are going through this process of – not inconsiderable - change.

What helps most is that even though you are still having undermining and self-sabotaging thoughts such as these, you repeat the TFI (and others), and see for yourself that your answers are actually different to those you gave just a few weeks before. Your new answers show you – in black and white – that the changes you are making are REAL and not imagined or “hoped for”.

Finally…
To finish off this item about using clinical measures, I would like to share with you an article written and published by me back in 2009. It was published in the British Academy of Audiology magazine that year, so its audience was Audiologists. It includes a case study about “Jack” – a pseudonym for an NHS patient I was working with at the time. You can download it here: The Therapy of Outcome Measures May 2009.pdf 61.76 KB

I wrote it at a time (2009) when I ran the Hearing Therapy services in East Lancashire Hospital NHS Trust, and was particularly frustrated by many Hearing Therapists and Audiologists and their inability – rather their unwillingness - to see “the point” of using measures as Outcomes at all – let alone for their patients’ benefit.