Feedback with patients who produce invalid testing: Professional values and reported practices

Abstract

Objective

Providing feedback to clinical patients who produce invalid neuropsychological test data presents with several potential challenges. Given the limited guidance available on the topic, neuropsychologists most likely utilize approaches that idiosyncratically incorporate professional values related to both assessment and patient care to address overarching feedback goals. The current article discusses professional values believed to inform feedback decisions and presents survey results regarding how neuropsychologists would approach feedback across various clinical scenarios where testing is invalid.

Method

Participants were 209 adult-focused clinical neuropsychologists recruited via professional listservs, the majority of whom reported being board certified. Respondents were provided three case vignettes of clinical patients who produced invalid test data and were asked how they would provide feedback to each patient. Open-ended responses were coded to determine the relative frequency of feedback approaches, explicit statements, and implied goals.

Results

Nearly all respondents (98%) indicated that feedback would include some description of the invalid findings, and most respondents indicated that they would provide explanations for the reasons of invalidity (67%) and statements regarding the impact of invalidity on test interpretation (75%). There was little agreement across respondents, however, regarding specific feedback approach. Feedback goals included to Inform, Investigate, Treat, Educate, and Correct, with the presence of these implied goals also varying across respondents.

Conclusions

The findings indicate that there is minimal consensus regarding feedback approaches provided to patients who produce invalid test data and underscore a need for further development and validation of specific feedback methods. The results are discussed within the context of the potentially competing professional values of evidence-based assessment, patient-doctor collaboration, and aspirational principles of beneficence and fidelity.

Keywords:

• Feedback
• invalid
• professional values
• reported practices

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank their colleagues who beta-tested the survey and provided feedback on it, as well as the 209 neuropsychologists who took the survey.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).