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

Prasher et al. (1995) built a simple two-part rating scale. It scores how well clinicians talk with adults who have profound learning disabilities. The team tested if different raters would give the same score when they watched the same consultation videos.

The scale worked. Raters agreed with each other. The new tool gives a reliable picture of both verbal and non-verbal clinician skills during real visits.

Reiss et al. (1993) tried a similar idea two years earlier. Their scale targeted adults with mild disability and reached only moderate agreement. The 1995 scale pushes the method further by focusing on people with the most severe needs and hitting stronger reliability.

Windsor et al. (2025) later checked every communication questionnaire for people with intellectual disability. They found none had full psychometric backing. That warning makes the 1995 scale’s clean inter-rater data stand out even more.

Jahoda et al. (2013) followed the same playbook to validate the MAGIC scale for group CBT fidelity. Both studies show that careful rater training and clear anchors can produce trustworthy scores in ID services.

You now have a quick, two-domain tool to check your own or your staff’s consultation style with non-speaking clients. Use it during supervision: watch a five-minute clip, score verbal and non-verbal items, and agree on one concrete change for the next visit. Reliable feedback loops like this protect client dignity and keep our communication standards high.