Therapy Outcome Measures: Physiotherapy, Occupational Therapy, Rehabilitation Nursing

Citation

Enderby, P., John, A. and Petheram, B. (2001), "Therapy Outcome Measures: Physiotherapy, Occupational Therapy, Rehabilitation Nursing", British Journal of Clinical Governance, Vol. 6 No. 1, pp. 46-46. https://doi.org/10.1108/bjcg.2001.6.1.46.1

From the Community Sciences Centre, Northern General Hospital and University of Sheffield, Pam, Alexander, and Brian have compiled a teaching manual on how to measure patient outcomes. Never before has the business of measuring outcomes been so important but so incredibly difficult. The book takes a look at four areas of patient status: impairment, disability, handicap, and well‐being. It then gives four case studies, a brief overview of outcome methods, a chapter on some operational instructions, and a chapter on results from clinical trials. After that we have over 40 pages of Appendices, most of which is repeated in a set of cards inside the back cover of the book.

The section on “Operational instructions” is very good and covers issues such as “What will I get out of this data?”, “Which patients should be assessed with which instruments and how often?”, “What happens if the patient/relatives seem to get worse?”.

The rest of the book has a clear and tight focus and the outcome measure score cards cover a wide spectrum of conditions such as anxiety, cardiac rehabilitation, dyspraxia, head injury, mental health, neurological disorders, stroke and wound care.

Clinical governance is encouraging a wider spectrum of professionals to integrate into multidisciplinary teams for the wellbeing of the patients. Physiotherapy, occupational therapy and rehabilitation nursing professionals interested in outcome measurement and management would do well with this workbook.