The inter-rater reliability of the Performance Oriented Mobility Assessment tool after brain surgery

Background/Aims Falls are a significant cause of hospital admissions in the UK and require clinically reasoned intervention from the multidisciplinary team to ensure the patient receives an effective and efficient treatment, including physiotherapy. This study aimed to assess the inter-rater reliability of the Performance Oriented Mobility Assessment in patients who had recently undergone brain surgery. Methods A prospective inter-rater reliability study involving 18 male and 12 female patients aged between 27 and 87 years who had recently undergone brain surgery was conducted. Three raters of varying clinical physiotherapy experience assessed participants using the Performance Oriented Mobility Assessment on an acute neurosurgical ward. Inter-rater reliability was measured using Bland-Altman plots and intraclass correlation coefficients. Results Bland-Altman plots and intraclass correlation coefficient values demonstrated excellent inter-rater reliability, regardless of the age and sex of the patients or the clinical experience of the rater. Conclusions Results suggest that the Performance Oriented Mobility Assessment is a potentially useful tool for assessing patients, particularly for the risk of falls, following brain surgery. Future research is needed to determine other clinimetric properties of this outcome measure before wider implementation.