The German translation of the Perme Intensive Care Unit Mobility Score and inter-rater reliability between physiotherapists and nurses

Abstract

Purpose: Patients in intensive care units (ICU)] are routinely mobilised by physiotherapists (PT) and registered nurses (RN), requiring multi-professional assessments. The Perme ICU Mobility Score (Perme Score) is a comprehensive tool to specifically describe the mobility status of patients in ICU. The aim of the study was to translate the Perme Score into German language and investigate the inter-rater reliability between PT and RN.

Methods: Prospective, observational study for reporting reliability between PT and RN. The Perme Score was translated from English to the German language in a regularised translation process. PT and RN assessed patients independently in a cardio-vascular ICU (CVICU). Inter-rater reliability was calculated by intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) with 95% confidence interval (95% CI).

Results: The ICC for overall inter-rater reliability was 0.962 (95% CI: 0.934–0.978) in the assessment of 58 patients. Only two items were assessed with an ICC less than 0.8: ability to follow commands (0.738, 95% CI: 0.556–0.898) and pain (0.462, 95% CI: 0.099–0.680). Two items were constant variables (lines and infusions).

Conclusions: The German version of the Perme Score presented a high inter-rater reliability between PT and RN in CVICU and is an inter-professional tool to assess the mobility status of patients in CVICU.

Keywords:

• Early mobilisation
• inter-professional cooperation
• assessment
• early mobility
• outcome measures

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank all physiotherapists and nurses of our ICU who assisted during the study. We would like to thank our reviewer for improving the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

The study was not funded. The authors report no conflicts of interest.