Assessing clinicians’ consultation with people with profound learning disability: producing a rating scale

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Abstract
This paper describes the development of a scale for assessing clitiicians’ communication with people with profound learning disability. Four psychiatrists and four nurses were assessed completing three simple non‐invasive clinical procedures—blood pressure, pulse and axillary temperature—with people with profound learning disability. Videotaped assessmetit of consultations was performed by three experienced speech and language therapists using a previously designed scale for analysing encounters with people with mild learning disability. This led to the production of a new scale specifically for people with profound learning disability. A significant inter‐rater reliability was found between the three speech therapists for total scores (rater a‐b, corr = 0·654, P= 0·006; rater a–c, corr = 0·795, P= 0·0001: rater b–c, corr = 0·673, P = 0·004). Significant reliability between raters was also found for the subsections of verbal behaviour and non‐verbal behaviour.