MEASUREMENT OF FUNCTIONAL ABILITY IN ELDERLY PATIENTS IN AN EMEREGENCY DEPARTMENT

Background: Many elderly patients still have disability with performing daily activities at discharge. It is therefore important to identify and measure their functional ability pre-discharge, with validated measures to use... [ view full abstract ]

Background:
Many elderly patients still have disability with performing daily activities at discharge. It is therefore important to identify and measure their functional ability pre-discharge, with validated measures to use within further rehabilitation. Our aim was to examine face validity and criterion validity of three performance measures.
Method:
Study participants (n=61) aged 65+ were included at an emergency department. The performance-based measures were Timed Up and Go (TUG), 30s-Chair Stand Test (30s-CST), and Assessment of Motor and Process Skills (AMPS). Barthel-20 (self-reported) was used as criterion standard.
Results:
Moderate correlations were found between Barthel-20 and TUG (r=-0.64) and Barthel-20 and AMPS motor (r=0.53). A fair correlation was found between Barthel-20 and 30s-CST (r=0.45). A poor correlation (r=0.06) was found between Barthel-20 and AMPS process. Face validity of the therapist’s assessments of the applicability of the measures was high. The results were affected by high ceiling (Barthel-20) and floor (TUG and 30s-CST) effects.
Conclusion:
The correlation between self-reported and performance-based assessments of functional ability was low to moderate. All the measures had high face validity.
Application to Practice:
Assessing functional ability with validated measurements can not only save the patient further testing post-discharge, the result can also be used by other professionals in the course of the patients’ rehabilitation and will probably improve the quality of the pathway as a whole.