• Francesca Gimigliano, Alessandro De Sire, Marco Gastaldo, Irene Maghini, Marco Paoletta, Andrea Pasquini, Paolo Boldrini, Melissa Selb, Birgit Prodinger, and SIMFER Residents Section Group.
• Department of Mental and Physical Health and Preventive Medicine, Luigi Vanvitelli University of Campania, Naples, Italy.
• Eur J Phys Rehabil Med. 2019 Apr 1; 55 (2): 258-264.

BackgroundThe International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) Generic-30 Set (previously referred to as Rehabilitation Set) is a minimal set of ICF categories for reporting and assessing functioning and disability in clinical populations with different health conditions along the continuum of care. Recently, the Italian Society of Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine (SIMFER) developed an Italian modification of the simple and intuitive descriptions (SID) of these categories. This study was the first one to implement the use of the SID in practice.AimThe main aims of this study are: 1) to implement the use of the ICF in clinical practice and research among Italian Residents in PRM, and 2) to verify if the SID made the application of ICF Generic 30 Set more user-friendly than the original descriptions; 3) to examine the prevalence of functioning problems of patients accessing Rehabilitation Services to serve as reference for the development of an ICF-based clinical data collection tool.DesignMulticenter cross-sectional study.SettingItalian Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation (PRM) outpatient rehabilitation services.PopulationPatients referring to Italian PRM outpatient rehabilitation services and Italian Residents in PRM.MethodsEach School of Specialization involved, randomly, received the ICF Generic-30 Set with the original descriptions or with the SID. Residents collected over a 4-month period (April-July 2016) patients data related to the ICF Generic-30 Set categories. Moreover, the residents self-assessed their difficulty in using the ICF Generic-30 Set with the original descriptions or with the SID, through a Numeric Rating Scale (NRS).ResultsNinety-three residents collected functioning data of 864 patients (mean aged 57.7±19.3) with ICF Generic-30 Set: 304 with the original descriptions and 560 with SID. The difficulty in using the ICF Generic-30 Set with SID was rated as lower than using the original descriptions (NRS 2.8±2.5 vs. 3.5±3.1; P<0.001). The most common disease was the back pain (9.6%) and the most common altered ICF categories were b280 (76.3%) and b710 (72.9%).ConclusionsThis multicenter cross-sectional study shown that the ICF Generic-30 Set is a valuable instrument for reporting and assessing functioning and disability in clinical populations with different health conditions and along the continuum of care and that SID facilitate the understanding of the ICF categories and therefore their use in clinical practice.Clinical Rehabilitation ImpactBy increasing the knowledge of ICF among Italian PRM residents, this national survey makes an important step towards the system-wide implementation of ICF in the Italian healthcare system.

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