Functional assessment in rehabilitation medicine: clinical applications

Functional assessments have become a cornerstone of rehabilitation medicine, assisting in well-defined aspects such as: quality assurance, continuous quality improvement, accountability, cost/benefit analysis, education, and research. In the second part of the 20th century, scaling techniques have become an integral part of the rehabilitation medicine discipline, and everybody is aware of their essential importance. However, even when engaged in a purely scientific discussion on the theoretical, mathematical basis of these measurements, a fundamental question arises as to what depth of accuracy is it possible to bring such measurements into a clinical scenario (or any real scenario). When it comes to the integration of all these principles, a balance must be achieved between pure theory and clinical applications, making it accessible for the average clinician and department routinely running functional evaluations. All these considerations are discussed with examples of data management that can be performed by systematically collecting data with the help of a computerized database where demographic, clinical and functional data is recorded. Rehabilitation teams and systems must be aware of function measurement principles and applications and determine their position in this regard.