Core Outcome Set (COS)

Occupational therapists, and their teams, address up to 45% of all referrals to adult social care (RCOT, 2019). They work across a range of areas including assessing people’s needs, providing equipment and adaptations for people’s homes, “reablement” (where people are supported to improve their independence), and helping people to move (or be moved) about their home.

This research is about ‘outcomes’, by which we mean the effects of the support provided for the person who has received occupational therapy. An ‘outcome measure’ is a tool – such as a questionnaire – that tries to say how much change in the outcome took place. Measuring outcomes is important because it helps to decide ’what works’, and how occupational therapists can best help people. However, there is no agreement about what outcomes matter most, and what measures are best in adult social care.

A range of different measures is used across services and research; some services do not measure outcomes at all. This makes it difficult to draw comparisons between services and research studies and may lead to poor use of resources. This problem was identified by social care practitioners and researchers working together.
 

• Aims and methods

  Our aim is to work with people using occupational therapy services, and their families, to build an agreement about the outcomes that should be measured and the measures that should be used.

  Four stages are proposed:

  • Interviews with up to 60 people using services, their families, and occupational therapists to explore their views on outcomes and aspects that are important to measure.
  • A review of the literature to find existing outcome measures that have been used in occupational therapy in adult social care research.
  • Statements about outcomes will be created from the findings from stages 1 and 2. A survey will be sent to up to 60 occupational therapists in adult social care and up to 20 people with experience of using occupational therapy services in adult social care. This is a type of survey, with several rounds, that is designed to build agreement – or ‘consensus’ – on these statements. A list of the key outcomes – a Core Outcome Set (COS) – will be created.
  • A search for outcome measures for the COS. We will assess the suitability and quality of these.

   

• Planned outputs

  We will share our findings widely across practice and public groups. We will use our excellent links with the Principal Occupational Therapists Network to do this. It is anticipated that the findings will lead to greater consistency in the use of measures in practice and research.

  We will produce an open access academic output for each area of work in order to enhance the transparency of the findings. In addition, we will produce a special guest editorial for the British Journal of Occupational Therapy summarising the entire findings.

  We will also produce a practice briefing for dissemination to OTs in practice via the Principal Occupational Therapists Network (POTN). We will produce an infographic for people using services and their families.