Identification of relevant ICF categories by health professionals in the acute hospital.

Purpose: To identify the most relevant problems of patients in the acute hospital in the view of health professionals using focus groups followed by a Delphi process.

Methods: Focus group and Delphi methodology were applied. The focus groups were conducted at three university hospitals. Three groups focusing on the problems in patients with neurological/neurosurgical, cardiopulmonary and musculoskeletal conditions were conducted at each hospital. The participants had to decide about which categories of the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health are relevant to patients in the acute hospital. The results from the focus groups were then followed by a Delphi process.

Results: Forty health professionals participated in the nine focus groups, 14 in the three neurological/neurosurgical groups, 13 in the three musculoskeletal groups, 13 in the three cardiopulmonary groups. One hundred and sixty-four of the second-level ICF categories (61.7% of all second-level categories) were considered as relevant by the health professionals of the neurological group, 100 categories (37.6%) by the musculoskeletal group and 91 (34.2%) by the cardiopulmonary group.

Conclusions: The involvement of experts from different health professions is a valuable tool to identify typical patient characteristics, expressed as distinct ICF categories, which can be used across different acute conditions.