The Essence of Functioning in Sleep Disorders

This doctoral project seeks to answer the question about the
essence of functioning, disability and health in the lived
experience of persons with any kind of primary sleep disorder. Its
overall objective is the development of a first version of Core
Sets of categories of the International Classification of
Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) in an evidence- and
consensus-based process. To this end, four separate studies
exploring different perspectives (researcher, clinical, patient,
health professional) have been conducted and their results provided
the evidence basis for selecting the relevant categories for the
ICF Core Sets for Sleep Disorders during an international consensus
conference. The doctoral thesis first-authored by the doctoral
candidate therefore consists of five separate publications (1
Systematic Review, 2 Patient Studies, 1 Expert Survey, 1 Conference
Results) that describe the different steps in the development
process.