The international classification of functioning, disability and health in clinical practice, research findings and their impact on training and education.
Liane Simon, Friederike Gölz, Olaf Schenk and 6 others
PMID 39329060WHAT IT FOUND
Across early intervention and child psychiatry projects, clinicians described ICF-based parent conversations and joint case discussions as helping them share a common language and involve parents.
The paper reports perceptions, not tested health outcomes.
Key findings
01Survey responses categorized the ICF's role in interprofessional culture as interprofessional communication (25%), common language (21%), participation-oriented (15%), other (14%), not at all (13%), and needs assessment (12%).
02Focus group participants said the ICF can support interdisciplinary collaboration, but only after professionals learn it as a common language and adopt a participation-oriented mindset.
03Parents in the I-Team project strongly rated feeling involved and taken seriously (14 of 16), open collaborative communication (12 of 16), and goal alignment (10 of 16).
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for PTsWhat it means for OTsWhat it means for SLPs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
The article is a narrative overview of projects run by the authors' institute, so it may present its own work favourably. The child psychiatry project is ongoing and reports preliminary nurse self-reports, not patient outcomes. The 2017 survey had a 32.9% response rate, and the 2020 survey had 182 responses, so the views may not represent all early childhood intervention centers. Parent ratings included only 16 parents, so they cannot show a general effect of the I-Teams. The projects are described as exploratory, ongoing, or preliminary, and no controlled comparison of health outcomes is reported. The education examples are implemented at one university, and the paper says their effectiveness is still to be assessed.
Declared interests
The ICF Research Institute is funded by MSH Medical School Hamburg, and the authors declare financial support for the research, authorship, and publication.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that using the ICF improves health outcomes. The paper reports self-reported collaboration and parent satisfaction in small, ongoing, or preliminary projects, not tested health outcomes.