Hodges' Model: Welcome to the QUAD: Holistic Bandwidth [II] 16, 180, breadth, depth and thoughts initial

Hodges' model is a conceptual framework to support reflection and critical thinking. Situated, the model can help integrate all disciplines (academic and professional). Amid news items, are posts that illustrate the scope and application of the model. A bibliography and A4 template are provided in the sidebar. Welcome to the QUAD ...

Thursday, February 28, 2008

Holistic Bandwidth [II] 16, 180, breadth, depth and thoughts initial

If we were able to put the care record into an appropriate text analysis program is there a measure of the conceptual span - the holistic bandwidth of care - somewhere in there? Could there be a disciplinary or task-based mesh, a tag cloud that could be superimposed on Hodges' model to represent care as holistic bandwidth?

Very early on in the web site's history a page was added on the multicontextual nature of health (and social care). This contexts page like the others has not been properly researched, which I recognise is a risk for readers in terms of 'evidence based sources' and a risk for me since of course the Web is a rather public arena to air initial thoughts.

Since the site and this blog are a call for research in this area, I'm sure a search would reveal a literature, but without recourse to said literature I'm not sure how explicitly - my incomplete - notion of holistic bandwidth has been studied in care contexts. On the context page I included several basic diagrams to indicate how Hodges' model might be used as a 'measure'. This page plus the others need revising with a bin (icon) close to hand, in the meantime how can we measure holistic bandwidth?

We could add the problems identified in each care domains, e.g.:

INTRA-interPERSONAL = 3
POLITICAL = 2
SOCIOLOGY = 5
SCIENCES = 6
= 16

Continuing in a fit of numerics we could throw in some multiplication - 3*2*5*6 = 180 ?
'180' is much more impressive than a paltry '16'.

What next...? Could the domain scores be weighted in some way? Is it valid to assign a primary domain? And while we are at it where does self-care fall (intra-interpersonal surely)? Wither the literary heavyweights of severity, chronicity, strengths, recovery and well-being. ...? Oops - how could I forget - dependency measures are nothing new; but the literature bearers are not the issue.

If we still frequently fail to deliver holistic care, then what is holistic bandwidth (actually measuring)? Is it -

  • The scope of care [in one or all of - assessment, planning, intervention, evaluation, outcome]?
  • Simplicity [breadth]?
  • Complexity [breadth and depth]?
  • (Rapid) care integration [time, connectedness]?
  • Concordance: clinical problems + patient (carer) problems + outcome set?
  • ....?