Hi Stefanus,
Having attended and participated fully in the Day one face to face contact of this ICF training course under your mentorship, I will say that the foundation you have laid for me in ICF within those two ICF information packed filled days helped me tremendously to appreciate Dr Olaf Kraus de Camargo post on personal factor.
This post gave me more insights into the term "Personal Factors" as defined in ICF; The specific background of life and life style of a person which include the aspects of the person that are not part of their health conditions, e.g gender, age fitness habits, coping styles, education, past and present experiences, profession, social background, even other health conditions etc.
Dr Olaf's post on "Personal Factor" in ICF is quite convincing for me especially his argument for personal factor not been included in the ICF coding. He has mentioned the Disability Creation Process (DCP) Model by Fougeyrollas et al having many aspects of ICF components of body structures and functions, and activities included under the personal factors of this model. This he said was one of the reasons why there are no codes for personal factors in ICF classification of Health Functioning, and disability.
I was also convinced by this post, that coding personal factors in ICF would defeat the purpose for which ICF was established; ICF is explicitly a classification of functioning in health and disability within a biopsychosociospiritual context and not a classification of persons.
I quite agree with his thought that the environmental factors considered in ICF as a major component has a great influence on personal factor as vividly exemplified by the example of the girl Mimi in her environment where depending on the various environmental situation, Mimi's Identity changes. I particularly find this example very helpful in understanding the complexity and subjectivity of personal factors within the context of the environment. I quite agree with his view that personal factors cannot be described with same certainty and organized into chapters as clinical finding that are related to the body with organs.
My thoughts are also that the description of personal factors will always be subjective because human persons are very complex and are greatly influnced by their environment/society. I also share the same thought that in the ICF frame work the box for personal factors should be left empty with the analogy of an empty sheet of paper to be filled through the collaboration of persons with health conditions and the healthcare professionals according to the situation.
Thank you Stefanus for this piece of information on personal factors in ICF. This post was quite helpful and very informative for me with regards to creating a deeper understanding of personal factors in ICF.
Olukemi.
DCP)