Look forward to your response.
Tanya

In the FCE cert course I took in November, I asked about the modified oswestry. Matheson would prefer use of the old Oswestry. I use the Modified Oswestry, because there has been a lot published in regards to sensitiviy to change, minimal detectable clinical change, and some other psychometric values, using the modified oswestry. None of these help in an FCE because you are looking for change, but physical capacity.

I use the modified oswestry in research, teaching, and treatment, so I carried it over to my FCE. The thing to remember with the modified Oswestry (or Oswestry in general) is, there has been NOTHING done to correlate percentage on an Oswestry with what a person is able to do , and should only really be used to look at a person's self perception of disability and to correlate it with how they actually do in the FCE. Oswestry is really designed to show change, and it is an excellent tool for that: demonstrate change from session to session in rehab or intervention settings: i.e. PT sessions, Chiro sessions, injections etc. It is NOT a measurement tool for function. Be careful with how you use it.

Thank you Mary. To clarify though, I was wondering if Matheson supports the changes made in the revised Oswestry questionnaire found at the link above? (I understand they currently support the use of the older version).

Look forward to your response.
Tanya

Matheson teaches the use of the Oswestry in the 5-day FCE course, and encourages evaluators to use it. It provides a good documentation of the evaluee's self-perception prior to functional testing and can then be compared to functional observations. I have personally found it to be a very useful tool.