August 2009

How not to use information

This column will focus on how not to use mental health information. A funny topic you may think, given that this column habitually focuses on the need to use information but perhaps we have simply had it all wrong. Perhaps, instead, we should heed the message of the silent majority that information is there not to be used.

Having thought about this silent majority of non-information users it occurs to me that there are a number of steps for preventing the use of information from happening. After thinking about it for some time I have identified eight distinct steps for ensuring non-information use. I need to acknowledge this shows I am way behind the silent majority who have understood and applied these steps for decades!

It is these steps that I want to discuss in the rest of this column.

The first step to not using information is to deny that there is any information to use.

If there is no information to use, how can anyone blame services or people for not using it? Straightforward really. Unfortunately, it is sometimes pointed out that there really is information to be used. There really are graphs and charts, tables and data on a whole host of matters. When this happens the next step is to point out the distinction between information and data and that data is not usable without a great deal more work. Given the lack of analytical grunt in many services this ploy is often successful.

However, should this wonderful step fail (presumably due to having the very capacity of converting data to information) then we can always claim that the information is usable but not relevant. It is claimed information is not relevant because the information doesn’t directly effect us, our service or the way we work. It is often a show stopper!!

For many services and individuals this is as far as they need to go – information is usable but non-relevant - but some excel and take it even further. Should that last hurdle be surmounted, the claim will be made such that: information is relevant but not important. This trivialisation of information is an inspired step, dismissing as it does any claims information may have to our attention.

Some services and individuals manage, however, to go even further. These services and individuals are the Olympians of non-information use! Information may be usable, relevant and important but we can’t access it because of our information technology systems (or maybe I should say lack of information technology systems). Few people have the detailed knowledge of technology to counter such a claim and hence more often than not information non use is guaranteed.

However, occasionally even that moat is crossed and then the real stroke of genius is to admit the information is usable, relevant and important and that it can be accessed through IT systems but that there is no one around to interpret the information and so, once again, the information can’t be used.

Should all these hurdles be crossed two more clever and sophisticated steps for not using information come into play.

These are the final defensive lines in non-information use and they are often held in reserve to be deployed in that especially tricky moment when pressure from on high is applied. The first of these usually runs: information may be interpreted but that even so none of the clinicians understand it (those ignorant clinicians! Shame on them!). Should someone tamely suggest training clinicians to understand it the response is quick and remarkable for its depth and brevity: there’s no time for training!

Should all of these steps fail and it be suggested that now information use can begin in earnest, the idea will be to ‘get back to basics’ which actually means going back to step one and starting all over again.

Page last updated: 10 August 2009