Practitioner Reliability Paper

Reliability refers to whether a diagnosis of schizophrenia will consistently be given to the same patient by different practitioners (Black & Grant, 2014). Before the release of the DSM-5, Kraemer et al. (2012) completed an experiment to ensure the reliability of diagnostic criteria. They suggested the DSM-5 was a reliable system for diagnosing schizophrenia as they measured it using test-retest reliability measures. There are two other methods for measuring reliability: intrarater reliability and inter-reliability. Intrarater reliability is a “blind” test where the same practitioner measures the same patient multiple times to ensure the practitioner is getting the same results for the same patient (Kraemer et al., 2012). Inter-reliability involves multiple professionals measuring the same patient to ensure the same diagnosis is consistently given (Kraemer et al., 2012). In clinical practice, however, a patient is only seen by one practitioner which means they need to be able to accurate diagnose people with different presentations. As thus, the most practical way to measure reliability is through test-retest ability. Test-retest reliability gets different practitioners to separately measure multiple patients, reflecting the different influences on reliability in a clinical setting (Kraemer et al., 2012). This is a more accurate reflection of the use of diagnosis in clinical practice as it involves …show more content…
There are limitations to its validity, as it could exclude help seekers who do not meet the threshold of full diagnosis; however it does appear to be valid when diagnosing severe cases of schizophrenia and providing suitable treatment approaches. This suggests a diagnosis of schizophrenia is predominantly valid, and therefore likely to be useful in guiding treatment. However, the positive impacts of this need to be weighed against the negative consequences of