Application of the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health in Physiotherapy - Literature review Example

The ICF is also designed to give fluid or dynamic measurement of health and disability, rather than being a strict diagnostic framework. The main benefit of the ICF is this integration of physical, social, and environmental factors, which are often left out of diagnoses made on a purely medical basis. Another important development in the ICF is the use of Core Sets, specific groupings tied to disease categories that were designed to simplify the extremely detailed and complex ICF. These have been shown to be useful in the ICF but will be examined below for their relevance in the clinical context. Finally, the ICF-CY (International Classification of Functioning, Disability, and Health for Children and Youth) was developed to be a framework-specific for child-related disability and functioning issues. Despite the fact that this classification is newer, it has been shown to have uses in pediatric physiotherapy which will be discussed in the following literature review.

The purpose of this literature review is to explore the usage of the ICF in physiotherapy; with a focus on real-world applications and the effect that usage has on children and adults. A review of the current literature on the topic (with a focus on physiotherapy) will give an overview of the history, usage, and implications of the ICF on the field and will illustrate how the ICF is implemented in current practice. The literature review will also analyze current research for their validity, generalizability, and applications in clinical practice to contribute to the interpretation of their results. Comments will also be made on how specific studies relate to the greater body of literature on the topic, as this is important for understanding the ICF and the ICF-CY in a wider context. Overall, it will become clear that the ICF has many practical applications in physiotherapy and can be integrated into clinical practice with positive results. Additionally, many suggestions are made that the most important practical use of the ICF is that it provides clinicians (including physiotherapists) working in multi-disciplinary teams with a common language, something which is extremely important in disability and health rehabilitation.

Background & History of the ICF 

In 1980, the International Classification of Impairments, Disabilities, and Handicaps (also known as the ICIDH) was developed by the World Health Organization (WHO) to provide a framework for classifying the consequences of the disease, rather than the symptoms of the disease itself. The ICIDH was then continuously revised by agencies in the United States and Canada since the early 1990s, with particular interest to the WHO Collaborating Center for the Classification of Diseases for North America. This agency plays a crucial role in the development of systems like the ICIDH (and later the ICF) because it represents the United States and Canada on ICIDH/ICF-related issues and supports the research and revision that go into creating the ICIDH/ICF (Gloor-Juzi et al, 2008). It is important for the ICF itself to reflect current literature on disability-related matters to ensure that it can be used accurately in several clinical situations, so this research is critical. The ICF classification system is designed to complement the WHO’s International Classification of Diseases (ICD – currently in the 10th edition), which is widely used to classify diseases and to form diagnoses.