A Comparison of Client Outcomes from Two Acute Care Neurological Services Using Self-Care Data from the Australian Therapy Outcome Measures for Occupational Therapy (AusTOMs - OT)

Abstract

The 12 scales in the Australian Therapy Outcome Measures for Occupational Therapy (AusTOMs-OT) have been previously reported as offering therapists a simple and quick outcome measure for use in all practice areas. This short report describes and compares outcomes for a sample of 82 clients with neurological problems from two acute care hospitals who were rated on the AusTOMs-OT Self-care scale. It was found that client outcomes were comparable at the two facilities, although one site had a higher number of occupational therapy contacts and a greater number of clients showed a reduction in their level of impairment. The findings of this study suggest that AusTOMs-OT can be used by services to compare client outcomes. Ultimately, AusTOMs-OT could be used to establish clinical benchmarks against which services could make comparisons.

The inter-rater and test–retest reliability of the Self-care and Transfer scales, and intra-rater reliability of all scales of the Swedish Translation of the Australian Therapy Outcome Measures for Occupational Therapy (AusTOMs-OT-S)

“…Furthermore, moderate to high intra-rater reliability has been demonstrated for all four domains of the AusTOMs-OT Self-care scale (32). Moreover, AusTOMs-OT is able to successfully demonstrate statistically significant change over time among clients (33,34). Of particular note, one of the studies collected data in Sweden, thus contributing to the validity of the AusTOMs-OT in a Swedish context (33).…”

“…The reliability and validity of the AusTOMs-OT has been established for Australian conditions (18,27,(32)(33)(34)(35)(36), including a concurrent validity study comparing the AusTOMs to the EQ-5D (37). Test-retest and interrater reliability across all 12 AusTOMs-OT have been identified as high (36).…”

“…The "Self-care" and "Transfers" scales were selected as these are two of the most frequently scored scales (34).…”

Benchmark Comparison of Outcomes for Clients With Upper-Limb Dysfunction After Stroke Using the Australian Therapy Outcome Measures for Occupational Therapy (AusTOMs–OT)

“…Several articles have examined the validity of the AusTOMsandshownthatithasexcellentcontent,face,and construct validity Unsworth, 2005;Unsworthetal.,2004)andisabletomeasurechangeover time (Unsworth & Duncombe, 2005;. For example, a statistically significant change over timeinclientscoresonthefourAusTOMs-OTdomains foreachscalewerefound(e.g.,fortheSelf-Carescalefor ActivityLimitation,Wilcoxonsignedrank=-12.186,p< .001).Reliabilitystudieshavealsobeenundertakenforall occupationaltherapy,physicaltherapy,andspeechpathol-ogyscalesbyMorrisetal.…”

Determination of the minimal clinically important difference on the Australian Therapy Outcome Measures for Occupational Therapy (AusTOMs – OT)

“…Several studies have documented that the AusTOMs -OT scales are responsive to detect change over time [24][25][26], by demonstrating statistically significant differences between clients' admission and discharge scores. While it is important to demonstrate the responsiveness (a component of construct validity) of any outcome measure, it is equally important to establish that the change measured is also of clinical value or significance.…”