Abstract
The experience of work and employment is a major life area to most people including persons with spinal cord injury (SCI); hence, it is crucial to understand and assess disability, which may affect work. In this chapter, the application of the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) model of the World Health Organization (WHO) and how the ICF model can help us to understand and examine work disability, vocational rehabilitation, and disability evaluation and their application to individuals with SCI will be discussed.
The ICF can be used as a universal reference framework when describing the functioning of an individual with SCI whose work functioning may be less than optimal or whose condition prevents optimal employment participation. One application of the ICF is the ICF Core Set, which is an essential set of ICF categories to depict functioning. Illustration and comparison will be made in this chapter using the ICF Core Set for Vocational Rehabilitation and ICF Core Set for SCI. Finally, contextual factors (environmental and personal factors) relevant to the topic of work and SCI are also presented.