A new approach to measuring recovery in injured workers with acute low back pain: Resumption of Activities of Daily Living Scale.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Spontaneous recovery, job satisfaction, and multiple other factors make return to work a highly problematic indicator. Available client questionnaires fail to consider what was "normal" or "usual" prior to low back injury. Based on themes described by injured persons, we suggest a new approach to determining "recovery"--the Resumption of Activities of Daily Living (RADL) Scale.

SUBJECTS: Injured persons and their therapists from 8 different clinics participated in the study.

METHODS

Twenty subjects completed the RADL twice, about 2 days apart, for assessment of test-retest reliability. The RADL was administered, along with other questionnaires, to a separate group of 94 subjects at clinic entry and at discharge or 3 weeks after clinic entry. Both subjects and clinicians made baseline predictions concerning return to work and global ratings of improvement and ability to return to work at follow-up.

RESULTS

The RADL showed good psychometric properties (i.e., test-retest reliability, internal consistency, responsiveness to change, and discriminative abilities).

CONCLUSION AND DISCUSSION: The RADL provides a new, standardized measure for assessing the extent of recovery from the time of injury to initiation of treatment, and concurrent with the course of treatment, using the individual's customary level of functioning as the benchmark.