Clinical Tools Framework

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The Clinical Tools Framework is a method of taking an idea, determining whether it should be implemented, implementing it (if warranted), and evaluating it to see whether (and how) it should be implemented again.

Contents

Values

What values do you hold?

Vision

What should the world look like? The vision statement expresses the end state of your entire enterprise. Presumably, your activity will lead to something different about yourself, the company, and/or the world. By expressing your vision, you tell your target audience your view of how the world should be and how your activity fits into that view. Vision come first. Vision is inspiring, important, necessary, takes effort to create, and is tied to core values. You probably don't have a vision unless you perceived a need. (we're going to go to the moon by the end of the decade) [we need to beat the Russians there!]. Need is important, but the vision should come first.

Need

The needs assessment allows one to determine whether the proposed activity actually fulfills a need. For example, "There are lots of birth defects." Why should anyone embark on this mission? Need should be obvious and very unlikely to be wrong (alcohol ruins lives, screening isn't done on every patient and undetected alcoholism is rampant). You might think the need should come first; That is, if we don't have a need then we should stop. But sometimes a need existed but it didn't deserve a vision. Or the needs are so multiple that it seems like the need that was chosen was random.

References in the need don't help since articles tend to be narrowly focused and thus it is unlikely that an article proves that a vision is logical. Also as we know articles disagree.

Specific numbers in the need (e.g, 15%) also don't work since they imply precision and again are probably tied to a specific situation. Numbers are specific and can be "doubted" - wide sweeping phrases are truism. Global Warming is real. Don't waste your time finding references and providing numbers. The folks who agree with you will agree with you. The folks who don't won't agree with you until Manhattan is under water.

Mission

How will we move towards the vision? The mission statement is less a view of the future and more a statement about what you do here and now that helps to realize the vision.

Target Audience

For whom is this project? At the most basic level, you would affect only yourself. However, you most likely would want to affect your co-workers, a specific demographic group (e.g., caregivers of Alzheimer's patients), or a specific professional group (e.g., medical students). Conceivably, your target audience could be "the world," but such a lofty goal might overly dilute your efforts.

Constraints

What will interfere with—or limit—success? Constraints serve as a reality check, helping you to narrow the scope of your activity — based on time, finances, and other limitations.

  1. Money
  2. People
  3. Time
  4. Existing requirements/regulations
  5. Etc....the more the better

Strengths

What supports success or will make the process easier? Strengths are the foundation of the project: elements that you don't have to build and on which you can count (i.e., money, people, time, etc.).

Goal

You have a vision of how the world should be, but how will your proposed activity get you there? The goal allows you to narrow your broad vision into something workable. Think of your activity as one piece of a larger puzzle — with the goal serving as the expression of how your piece fits into the wider scheme.

Objectives

What are the steps to accomplish the goal? Objectives allow you to make your goal concrete. Think of objectives as the actual accomplishments of your target audience OR the actual accomplishments of your activity in relation to your target audience. Objectives should be written in order, using action-oriented phrases that are measurable; they should not be so vague as to evade evaluation.

Competition and Collaboration

What has been done already?

Participants and Roles

Person/Group: What they are going to be doing

Planned Implementation

How are we going to accomplish the project? The specifications and progress documents are creations in themselves.

The implementation is, arguably, the easiest part of the process. If you have devoted enough time in determining why you're engaged in your activity, who the activity should affect, and what the outcomes should be, then the implementation should fall into place. The amount of time devoted to implementation will vary, depending on the activity. Some activities take minutes, others take years.

Time line

What will happen in broad terms over the next one to three months? Think short term here.

Alternative Solutions

What are the options? What is the most cost-effective way to get the project completed? If a more efficient solution is being ignored, why?

Evaluation Design

What method will be used to measure success? The evaluation will measure whether your objectives were met. If your objectives were written in an action-oriented fashion, then it should be relatively easy to choose the method by which to evaluate your activity.

A simple measure of success is the satisfaction survey, which comes standard in almost everything we do.

Findings and Questions

What did you find in terms of your evaluation? What do you need to learn/understand in order to proceed further? For example:

  1. What technology is going to change this project in the near future?
  2. Are people's expectations changing?

New Ideas

What is outside the mission but still worth doing (in another project, of course)?

  1. Once our solution is in place, the beneficiaries of our solution would need _______________.
  2. To achieve even more success, it would help if _______________ were in place.

Communication

How can you tell people about this project?

Resources

PubMed

Examples

edit table

Clinical Tools Frameworks

Consumers

Intermediaries

Health Researchers

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