Interrater Reliability of the AM-PAC 6-Clicks Basic Mobility Short Form Between Nurses and Physical Therapists

Abstract

Objective: To examine the interrater reliability between nurse- and physical therapist (PT)-recorded scores from the Activity Measure for Post-Acute Care 6-Clicks Basic Mobility short form across hospitals, services, and categories of assessment timing.

Design: Cross-sectional study of retrospective electronic health record data.

Setting: Data were collected for patients in 11 hospitals between January 2020 and October 2022. Nurse- and PT-recorded 6-Clicks mobility scores were paired by date.

Participants: There were 535,974 unique score pairs for 127,583 patients.

Interventions: Not applicable.

Main outcome: Interrater reliability was examined using intraclass correlation coefficients where values <0.5, 0.5-0.75, 0.75-0.9, and >0.9 indicate poor, moderate, good, and excellent reliability, respectively. In secondary analyses, score pairs were categorized according to: (1) hospital, (2) unit type (intensive care vs other), (3) clinical service, and (4) relative timing of nurse- and PT-recorded scores.

Measures: 6-Clicks Basic Mobility short form.

Results: The interrater reliability was good overall, in 6 hospitals (moderate in 4 hospitals and poor in 1), in both intensive care and other units, for 4 out of 5 clinical services (moderate for 1), and for 4 out of 5 timing categories (moderate for 1).

Conclusions: In this large study of real-world data, nurse- and PT-recorded 6-Clicks mobility scores had moderate-to-good interrater reliability.

Keywords: Interdisciplinary; Mobility; Mobility assessment; Rehabilitation.