ICF Intervention Categories for Physiotherapy in the Treatment of Patients with Musculoskeletal Conditions

Background: The International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) holds great promise for providing rehabilitation disciplines with an interdisciplinary language. In order to facilitate its use in clinical practice of physiotherapy a first version of relevant ICF-Intervention categories was developed. Objective: This study's aim was to investigate which and with which frequency ICF-intervention categories contained in the 1. version for physiotherapists are represented in clinical practice. Method: The study was conducted as a retrospective, cross-sectional, multi-centered study. Convenience sample: 300 clinical records of patients with musculoskeletal conditions, from 62 different Swiss institutions, in proportion to Switzerland's population distribution across 3 language regions. All treatment objectives were associated with ICF-categories. All categories represented in more than 5% of the documents were listed in intervention categories. Results: 45 institutions participated in the study. 99 clinical records from acute, 101 from rehabilitation and 80 records from community health care situations were obtained. 38 second level categories for the acute context, 46 for the rehabilitation and 38 for the long term context constitute the ICF-intervention categories for musculoskeletal health conditions. Conclusion: ICF-Intervention categories can express physical therapy treatment objectives in an interdisciplinary, comprehensible language.