TOMs CONNECT - Overview
Welcome to TOMs CONNECT – the place where you can start to learn about the Therapy Outcome Measures and access various documents to support your interest.
The Therapy Outcome Measure
The Therapy Outcome Measure (TOM) is an outcome measure that allows professionals from many disciplines working in health, social care and education to describe the relative abilities and difficulties of a patient/client in the four domains of ‘impairment’, ‘activity’, ‘participation’ and ‘wellbeing’ in order to monitor changes over time. TOM has been rigorously tested for reliability and clinical validity. It is quick and simple to use, taking just a few minutes to complete, and is used for treatment planning, clinical management, audit and research. It allows for the aggregation of data so that comparisons can be made for the purposes of internal and external benchmarking.
You will learn more about the TOMs from this summary document and this short series of slides put together by Prof Pam Enderby.
Understanding the Basics:
A step-by-step guide for getting familiar with the TOM, which you can read when you sign up for the new TOMs training programme.
The Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists and TOM
Following an indepth analysis of outcome measures, the RCSLT have embarked on an innovative and ambitious project to support speech and language therapists with delivering and measuring effective outcomes. Using the Therapy Outcome Measure.
You can read more about this project from here
To read the view of RCSLT on the TOM in an article published in January 2015 in the SLT Bulletin click here.
Therapy Outcome Measure for AAC
Read an article published in the Sept 15 issue of the SLT Bulletin which describes the potential for using TOM in Augmentative and Alternative Communication – click here.
Therapy Outcome Measure and Dysphagia
The Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists, SLT bulletin recently published an article (Feb 2016) where Prof Pam Enderby discusses the use of the TOM in acute dysphagia. To read the article click here
The use of outcome measures and factors affecting use in adult social care occupational therapy services in the UK.
In this study participants (n = 20) used a range of outcome measures (13) in adult social care settings in the previous 12 months. Standardised measures were used by half the sample in the previous 12 months. The Therapy Outcome Measure and Barthel Index were in most use. The breadth of adult social care practice and practical factors such as caseload and lack of a meaningful tool were found to be barriers to outcome measure use. Facilitators included service improvement, accountability, use of audit and professional occupational therapy leadership. To read the full paper please visit this website page.
Key References
Learning how to use the TOMs
Led by Professor Pam Enderby, this workshop provides participants with a grounding in the key drivers behind the implementation of outcome measures across the NHS. It will set out the core principles behind the development of the Therapy Outcome Measure (TOM) and how to use for collecting and measuring outcomes data on clients receiving treatments. The day includes both theoretical and practical components.
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TOMs – Train the Trainers
Once you have completed the standard one day TOMs training course, you may want to think about becoming a trainer so that you can extend the reach of the TOMs across your Trust or organisation.
This half day train course is designed for those professionals, who wish to gain the required skills and knowledge that enables them to become skilled TOMs trainers in order to run TOM workshops across their service. Resources are provided for the Trainers to support their training.
The delegate fee is £245 (reduced for online training), which covers the license for you to provide TOMs training across your organisation/Trust as well access to online resources, to which we have recently added a series of video modules based on the basic TOMs training.
Details of the next Train the trainer course will be posted on the events page of the website. If you are interested to be booked onto a future course please email info@communitytherapy.org.uk.
Therapy Outcome Measure User Guide
This book builds on Therapy Outcome Measures 3rd edition, and its focus is on the practical and everyday use of the TOM. It contains 50 developed scales rigorously tested for reliability and clinical validity, plus 18 scales which are under development, and 6 accompanying scales. The text gives a thorough grounding into how to use the TOM, with many FAQs to aid both trainer & user, as well as information on how to develop new TOMs. As part of our new TOMs Training Programme, all delegates get free access to “Understanding the Basics”. The first chapter of the manual.
Copies of manual priced at £35 are available from www.innervate.co.uk/shop/
Therapy Outcome Measure – Theoretical Underpinning and Case Studies
The Therapy Outcome Measure (TOM) allows professionals from many disciplines working in health, social care and education to describe the relative abilities and difficulties of a patient/client in the four domains of impairment, activity, participation and wellbeing. It has been rigorously tested for reliability and clinical validity, is quick and simple to use, and is used for treatment planning, clinical management, audit and research. It allows for the aggregation of data so that comparisons can be made for the purposes of internal and external benchmarking.
This is a companion volume to Therapy Outcome Measure User Guide,
ISBN 978-1-907826-44-3
Copies of the book, priced at £24.99 are available from www.innervate.co.uk/shop/
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TOMs CONNECT Conference
The TOMs CONNECT conference is an event that started in 2016 and is run every two years. In 2020, like many events, it moved online and all the presentation can be accessed from the TOMs CONNECT menu.
To view the videos or the slides from other pervious TOMs CONNECT conferences, click on the TOMs CONNECT menu and select the conference from there. Or you can go directly to the page from here.
This year, TOMs CONNECT 22 took place with Tevent on the 15th of November and you can read more about it by clicking on the following image.
Here is one person’s comments received after one of the previous conference.
“Good morning Neil
Firstly, thank you for facilitating the TOMs Connect conference, it was very timely for our organisation, stimulating and useful.
We suspended the face to face delivery of our therapeutic intervention, Social and Therapeutic Horticulture (STH), between March and October, but have resumed over the last few weeks and are now delivering about 80% of our services. STH uses gardening as the tool through which therapy is delivered to people living with a range of physical and mental ill health, and we work in Battersea Park in London, our own gardens Trunkwell, in Beech Hill, Reading, and in Kings Heath Park in Birmingham.
Conscious that we were not able to demonstrate the value and efficacy of our work, 2 years ago we started to look at TOMs, and some of our team attended Dr Enderby’s training. We followed this up with internal workshops and commenced scoring using the TOMs scales, but this took a long time to develop, and our efforts were rudely interrupted by Covid. The conference presentations and discussions gave us confidence that we are on the right track, and encountering similar barriers experienced by others.
With kind regards.
Alex Wakefield
Head of Operations – GUC”
Thrive
www.thrive.org.uk
Collecting & analysing outcome data: supporting service transformation
This is the title of the session that took place at the 2021 virtual Physiotherapy UK conference, lead by Prof Pam Enderby. It opened with a highly engaging presentation from Neil Pettinger on “Story Telling with Data” and you can watch the 1 hour session by clicking on the image.
If you wish to book to attend the live Q and A with the panel to discuss and thoughts and questions you may after watching the session, you can do that from here.