Implementing Patient Health Questionnaire Depression Screening in Inflammatory Arthritis Clinic: Insights From a Quality Improvement Project at a Tertiary Rheumatology Center.

ABSTRACT:

Objective

This quality improvement project evaluates the feasibility and sustainability of adopting the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ) depression screening tool into routine clinical care at a rheumatology fellows' inflammatory arthritis (IA) clinic at a large tertiary center. The aim was to achieve 50% compliance in documentation of PHQ after five months.

Methods

Providers received a 30-minute education on the importance of depression screening in patients with IA. A week after the education, two-step depression screening with the PHQ-2 followed by the PHQ-9 was implemented. Nurses performed PHQ-2 at each IA clinic visit verbally and documented the results while rooming patients using an electronic health record (EHR) dotphrase. Patients completed paper forms of the PHQ

SUBMITTER: Yu JM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11694136 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature