1 Before you use it
What it is
Metadata only. The form does not appear in CliniStudy and never will.
The most widely used low back disability measure in the world: ten sections — pain intensity, personal care, lifting, walking, sitting, standing, sleeping, sex life, social life, travelling.
A student will be handed an ODI score on placement, so they need to be able to read one. That is why this card exists.
When to reach for it
When someone else has already administered it — a surgeon's letter, a pain clinic report, a placement site's standard paperwork.
For your own baseline, use the Roland-Morris. Same construct, no licence, better responsiveness in a less-disabled outpatient caseload.
2 Giving it
Scoring
Each section 0–5, totalled and expressed as a percentage of the maximum possible. Higher means more disability.
If a section is not completed, the score is calculated out of the sections that were.
What it doesn’t measure
Pain intensity as a standalone, fear, or work risk — same limits as any disability index.
3 Reading the score
Interpreting it
Bands conventionally run from minimal through moderate, severe, crippled, to bed-bound.
What a student actually needs: it runs 0–100%, higher is worse, and a change of roughly 10 percentage points is often treated as meaningful. Read the number, don't administer the form.
Is the change real?
Student trap. Photocopying one off a placement site and putting it in your own resources. Being handed a score is not a licence to reproduce the form.
Licensed through eprovide.mapi-trust.org. We don't host the form.
Use instead: RMDQ — same construct, no licence.
This is a learning tool. It does not diagnose patients and does not replace your clinical educator.
Did this page do its job?
CliniStudy is in beta. One tap is enough — it decides what gets fixed first.