Validity and clinical utility of the Personal Care - Participation Assessment and Resource Tool (PC-PART)

Inpatient rehabilitation aims to facilitate people’s functional recovery and return to participation in daily life roles and occupations. A critical aspect of rehabilitation is enabling people’s accomplishment of activities of daily living (ADL) required for community life. Functioning in ADL is typically assessed by occupational therapists in preparation for discharge to community living using a combination of standardised and non-standardised assessment methods. Typically used standardised assessments are important but their measurement constructs are limited in scope compared to the measurement needs of the rehabilitation context. The International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) provides a useful internationally recognised framework to help clinicians conceptualise and operationalise measurement of the breadth of human health status and functioning. In accordance with this framework, the Personal Care-Participation Assessment and Resource Tool (PCPART) aims to measure service-users’ participation restrictions in ADL required for community life, an aspect of functioning not typically measured in rehabilitation settings. The PC-PART may fill an important measurement gap in rehabilitation and contribute to comprehensive and clinically meaningful measurement of outcomes that are relevant to service-users’ life situations.