ICF and Application in Clinical Practice

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Original Editor - Ewa Jaraczewska based on the course by Patricia Saleeby

Top Contributors - Ewa Jaraczewska, Jess Bell and Tarina van der Stockt  

Introduction

A comprehensive and holistic nature of the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) makes it extremely useful in clinical practice. The primary purpose of applying the ICF into clinical practice is to establish a common language for defining health and health-related states between different providers. It improves communication in decision making among healthcare and social care professionals, which is essential for making more informed assessments, developing more effective interventions, and achieving good patient outcomes.

Overview of ICF

The ICF defines the interaction between health conditions, personal and social factors, daily life activities and social life.The relationship between these various domains and components is reciprocal, which explains how they interact with one another.

The following are the characteristics of the ICF:

• The ICF is universal: applies to all people regardless of age, gender, socioeconomic and health condition.

• The ICF is neutral : does not relate person's functioning to the cause of their health status.
• The ICF uses neutral language when describing health and health-related states.
• The ICF provides continuum between functioning and disability.

Framework

The ICF is a biopsychosocial model of functioning, health and disability. By using a standard language to define and measure disability, the ICF helps to explain how person's body problems and social circumstances effect person's functioning.

Definitions for the ICF Domains/Components

Based on the ICF model, the person is viewed in terms of their health conditions, their body functions and structures, their activities and participation, and their environmental and personal factors.

• Health condition: "an umbrella term for disease, disorder, injury, trauma"
• Body Functions:" physiological functions of body system, including psychological functions"
• Body Structures: "anatomical parts of the body, such as organ, limbs and their components"
• Activity: "execution of a task or action by an individual". Activity limitations describes the problems or issues at the level of the individual.
• Participation:"involvement in a life situation". Participation restrictions are problems the individuals may experience in their life situation or within environmental context.
• Environmental factors: "physical, social and attitudinal environment in which people live".
• Personal factors: "particular background of an individual's life and living".

You can learn more about ICF components and ICF qualifiers here.

Case Study

Case study: A patient sustained a burn injury to the hand causing damage to the integrity of the skin structure.

Goal:To define ICF codes that correspond to this patient's injury for the purpose of assessmentHealth condition (ICD-11): Burn injury to the hand

• ND95:Burn of wrist or hand
  • ND95.3: Burn of wrist or hand, full thickness burn

Body structure codes (s codes) according to specificity :

• s810: structures of the area of skin
• s8102: skin of the upper extremity

Body functions (b codes) following the skin healing process:

• b810: protective functions of the skin may be impaired temporarily
• b820: functions of the skin for repairing breaks and other damage to the skin (from wound stage to scar formation)
  • Inclusion and exclusion criteria can be applied to the body functions domain:
    • Inclusion: function of scab formation, healing, scaring; bruising and keloid formation
    • Exclusion: protective function of the skin; other functions of the skin.

Activities and Participation (d codes) can be restricted due to nerve damage, or poor healing, which can effect long term mobility and hand function, including:

• d445: hand and arm use
• d440: finer use of the hand
  • d4401:use one or both hands to seize or hold something (example: grasping a tool or a door knob)
• d550: eating (example: "carrying out the coordinated tasks and actions of eating food that has been served, bringing it to the mouth and consuming it in culturally accepted ways, cutting or breaking food into pieces, opening bottles and cans, using eating implements, having meals, feasting, or dining".)
• d750: limited or lack off informal social relationships including meeting with a neighbour or participation in happy hour with co-workers due to cosmetic concerns and body image distress.
• d845: no being able to maintain the job due to anxiety and perceived stigma related to scarring in the area of the hand.

Environment(e codes)

• e460: not comfortable going out shopping due to societal attitude towards visible scars, causing person's anxiety

Core Sets

ICF Core Sets (ICF­CS) are " selection of essential categories from the full ICF classification that are considered most relevant to describe the functioning of a person with a specific health condition or in a specific healthcare context". Their purpose is to facilitate assessments in clinical practices and research.

The ICF Core Sets are shortlists chosen from over 1400 ICF categories describing functioning, disability and health. They are developed for acute, early post acute and longterm conditions, but they are also categorised as neurological, musculoskeletal, cardiopulmonary conditions, spinal cord injury and vocational rehabilitation. Each ICFCS has its comprehensive and brief versions. Brief version of ICFCS contains categories, that describe functioning at its minimum standard.

The process of the ICF Core Set creation is complex and includes three phases:

• Phase 1: Collecting the evidence that contains empirical multi-centre study, a systematic literature review, a qualitative study and an expert survey who are only health professionals who practise with clients, but also the clients with a specific health condition
• Phase 2: The international consensus conference
• Phase 3: Implementation of ICF­CSs by introducing them into practice

The purposes of using the ICF Core Sets in clinical practice can be as follows:

• to help with a selection of an appropriate combination of outcome measures
• to assist with selection of a tool in developing comprehensive outcome measures
• to describe patterns of disability [41].
• to inform about the magnitude, the location and the nature of any problem of functioning.
• to highlight strengths and weaknesses of an individual-patient
• to describe changes in a patient’s functional profiles over time.

Clinical Forms

Development of clinical forms allows health care professionals to focus on specific patient's problems, and "to relate the disabilities to relevant and modifiable variables." The use of clinical forms in clinical practice was summarised by Levesque L and Thoomes E as follows:

• It encourages a biopsychosocial perspective
• It allows the clinician to identify all factors within the ICF model
• It directs the healthcare professionals to use the most appropriate objective tests and outcome measures
• It  highlights contextual factors – personal and environmental which may affect prognosis and patients' recovery
• It enables the clinician to identify factors which can be modifiable.

Rehabilitation Problem-Solving Form (RPS-Form)

allows health care professionals to analyze the patient’s functioning by presenting the assessment results in all components of human functioning and environmental and personal factors. In particular, the RPS-Form was designed to address the patients' perspectives and enhance their participation in the decision-making process of rehabilitation. The use of a common measurement tool, such as the RPS-Form, can therefore be beneficial and serve as language tool between health professionals. According to Stucki at al. (2003), the new language ICF - or modified RPS-Form - is an exciting landmark event for rehabilitation. It may lead to a stronger position of rehabilitation within the medical community, change multi-professional communication and improve communication between patients and rehabilitation professionals

The RPS-Form, is of course not the only conceptual framework which can be used in clinical practice, but it certainly addresses the patients’ perspectives and enhances their participation in the decision-making process (Steiner et al. 2002), which discriminates the RPS-Form from other forms.

1. Based on the framework of the Rehabilitation Cycle (and its modified version, the Rehab- CYCLE, as explained later) developed by Stucki and Sangha (1997), the advanced form developed by Steiner et al. (2002) is called the “Rehabilitation Problem-Solving Form” (RPS-Form). As stated by Steiner et al. (2002), the RPS-Form can be seen as a tool in clinical use to assemble the idea of the Rehab-CYCLE, and the ICF Model. As mentioned before, the ICIDH and the ICF are models of health and rehabilitation, rather than a practical tool. The RPS-Form therefore can be used as a tool for clinical assessment data collection. It enhances the patient-centred approach and the decision- making process. The RPS-Form gives a clear visual picture of the patient’s complaints and influencing factors on the person’s health condition. The core problem can be emphasized and clearly linked with secondary influencing factors and disturbing factors which can interfere with the normal healing course. Later on in this paper the use of the RPS-Form will be explained in more detail.
2. According to Stucki et al. (2002), the RPS-Form is used to identify specific and relevant target problems, discern factors that cause or contribute to these problems, and plan the most appropriate interventions.

You can find more about the application of the RPS form for a specific condition here.

Cross-Walking of the ICF

Less than half of the ICF categories in the defined ICF sets were covered by clinical assessment tools. Low correspondence was found predominantly in acute and late long-term phase. Least well covered were categories of activities and participations and environmental factors. The correspondence of categories increased when considering the additional ICF categories identified from patient interviews. The description of rehabilitation services provided in each case classified according to the dimensions of service provider, funding, and service delivery.There is a need to promote the systematic and standardized assessment of functioning among health professionals working in the field of SCI in developing countries. This study describes basic steps toward developing a standardized ICF-based system for assessing and reporting functioning outcomes in SCI rehabilitation and across the continuum of care.

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