International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) in neurorehabilitation daily practice: An interdisciplinary project

Resumen

Aim: An in depth study of the use of the ICF as a method of complete and interdisciplinary evaluation of the acquired brain injury (ABI) patient. The theoretical model guiding evaluation and rehabilitation of this community should be the biopsicosocial approach (based on the ICF), which is concerned with how different health dimensions, together with environmental factors determine the person’s independence. A precise evaluation should gather information from all the different disciplines working with ABI patients, that is, occupational therapy, physiotherapy, speech therapy, neuropsychology, medicine, and so on. Each discipline provides complementary information, which creates the individual profile and treatment program. Method: Each ICF item is accompanied by a code specifying the magnitude of the problem. These codes must be related to methods that guarantee objective evaluations. To insure this we established correspondences between standardised test scores each discipline usually uses with the generic ICF scale. In items lacking evaluation instruments, quantification will be established which may be used in a standard manner for different evaluators. Other ICF sections that fail to take indispensable functions in an evaluation into account will be analysed and subsections added to cover those lacking. Results: This is an ongoing investigation in which different ICF applications will be analysed as a tool for statistics, clinical investigation, education and social politics.