Article

OBJECTIVE: To investigate how clinical experience and access to patient
information regarding functional capability influence inter-rater reliability and
validity of the Brief International Classification of Functioning, Disability,
and Health Core Set for Stroke (ICF) assessment. METHODS: Study 1 involved expert
(clinical experience > 5 years) and novice (clinical experience
< 2 years)
rater-pairs, each evaluating the same post-stroke patients using the ICF
assessment (n = 149). Study 2 involved novice raters separately evaluating a
different cohort of post-stroke patients with the ICF assessment (n = 78). The
novice raters had prior knowledge of patient functioning through conducting 6
clinical tests. RESULTS: For Study 1, the expert rater-pairs (kappa=0.50-0.85 for
categories; intra-class correlation (ICC)=0.76-0.96 for components) had higher
reliability coefficients than novice rater-pairs (kappa=0.18-0.69 for categories;
ICC=0.63-0.88 for components). For Study 2, the novice raters with prior
knowledge of patient's functioning yielded significantly higher ICF component
scores than those without prior knowledge. The former raters' component scores
were comparable to those of the expert rater-pairs. CONCLUSION: Clinical
experience in post-stroke rehabilitation enhances inter-rater reliability of ICF
assessment. Know-ledge of patient's functional capability, such as conducting
common clinical tests in post-stroke rehabilitation, is useful for improving assessment validity.

Langue : ANGLAIS