ICF Trauma Rehabilitation Conference 2016

An international conference to reach consensus on an ICF core set for traumatic injuries took place from Thursday 13 October to Saturday 15 October at the Hilton London Gatwick Airport.

What was the conference about?

From 13^th -15^th October, trauma experts from all over the world gathered at Gatwick to develop a framework for measuring the effectiveness of trauma rehabilitation interventions.

The ICF consensus conference was organized by AfterTrauma founder Dr Karen Hoffman, with support from the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich.

The consensus conference was the final step in the development of an International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) Core Set for Traumatic Injuries.

The ICF will enable clinicians and researchers to compare the rehabilitation needs and outcomes of trauma patients nationally and internationally. TheTrauma Core Set will be a framework for assessment of items important to patients and a structure for rehabilitation interventions.

Delegates to the ICF Trauma Rehabilitation consensus conference - October 2016

A 31 strong dedicated team of delegates from all continents, and from many different disciplines (eg surgery, physiotherapy, psychology etc) as well as patient and carer representatives worked hard to produce the framework. The group produced a core set of 19 items in the end, scaled down from hundreds of ICF categories.

Why was the conference needed?

The consensus conference was the final step in the development of an International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) Core Set for Traumatic Injuries and was essential to obtain World Health Organisation (WHO) endorsement and compliance with the Core Set development protocol.

ICF Core Sets are endorsed by the WHO to promote the use of a standardised ICF language amongst rehabilitation professionals to enable international comparison of health and disability in similar patient populations.

Why use the ICF to measure rehabilitation outcome in major trauma/ poly trauma?

Examples of how the ICF can be used can be found here and examples of electronic documentation and use here.

Dr Karen Hoffman developed the core set because she believes people working in trauma would like to be able to compare the rehabilitation needs and outcomes of trauma patients nationally and internationally to enable comparison of outcome. To date a wide variety of outcome measures have been used to measure outcome.

The Trauma Core Set will provide practitioners with a common framework and minimum standards to help patients identify rehabilitation interventions that will help them achieve the outcomes they want.

What next?

The next step is for the trauma rehabilitation Core Set to be published in a peer review journal early in 2017. It will then be available on the ICF Core Sets website for download by clinicians for use with their patients.