"I first came across outcome measures in 1998 when I started work as a homeopath in an NHS community menopause clinic in Sheffield along with a medically trained homeopath Dr Pat Strong (MFHom). We had to complete MYMOP forms and Kupperman Menopausal index forms for each patient at every consultation. Neither of us wanted to do this. We believed that we did not have the time, that patients would not want to do it, that it would affect the therapeutic relationship, that the results would show that we were rubbish homeopaths etc. But we had to do it, so we did.



After a few months we discovered that we had both stopped using the Kupperman Menopausal Index forms (our patients did not like the list of closed questions 'do you have symptom x, y, z?'), but we were using MYMOP. Our patients liked the open style questions:
'choose two symptoms that bother you the most and write them down, now decide how good or bad this has been in the last week(s) and score it by circling a number.....'

We were finding that filling in the MYMOP forms was actually improving our consultations: we were clearer about the focus of treatment from the patients perspective, patients sometimes disclosed information on the forms that they could not verbalise (e.g. low libido, vaginal dryness), and the information made follow up consultations easier if we unclear as to whether the patient was improving or not. We even started using MYMOP with our non-NHS patients.

"As the years passed, the pile of MYMOP forms grew. After two years, local researchers at the University of Sheffield used our growing pile of NHS clinic MYMOP forms (anonymised) to compile a report on our NHS Homeopathy service. This helped the service obtain further funding, and helped us be nominated a Best Integrated Practice award from the Foundation for Integrated Health.