Current functional assessment tools

In last month's issue of Home Healthcare Nurse, the article "Functional Assessment of the Home Health Client" described the value of performing functional assessment in relation to OASIS and methods to use in assessing a client's ability to perform activities of daily living (ADL) and instrumental activities of daily living (IADL). Although many different instruments are used to measure functional ability, this article will describe three of the commonly used instruments for measuring functional ability: the Barthel Index, the Functional Independence Measure (FIM), and PULSES have been tested for reliability and validity. The WeeFIM will also be discussed.