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Instruments to Assess Functional Status

  • Chapter
Geriatric Medicine

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Abstract

The essence of geriatric practice is the expert management of a patient’s needs. To accomplish this goal, a geriatric team must translate its knowledge about a patient’s functional abilities and limitations, psychologic state, social support, and personal preferences into recommendations that often have far-reaching effects on the patient’s life-style. This requires a physician to become involved in collecting, synthesizing, interpreting, and weighting a formidable amount of patient-specific information. Much of this information differs, in kind, from the laboratory values, physical signs and symptoms, radiology results, and other data that are combined to reach a medical diagnosis. In 1987, a Consensus Panel convened by the National Institute on Aging agreed that functional assessment, ie, assessment of the patient’s “ability to function in the arena of everyday living,” is integral to medical decision making.1–2

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Authors
  1. Rosalie A. Kane
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Section of General Internal Medicine, The University of Chicago Medical Center, 60637, Chicago, Illinois, USA

    Christine K. Cassel M.D. (Chief) (Chief)

  2. Journal of the American Medical Association, 60610, Chicago, Illinois, USA

    Donald E. Riesenberg M.D. (Senior Editor, Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine) (Senior Editor, Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine)

  3. Pritzker School of Medicine, University of Chicago, 60637, Chicago, Illinois, USA

    Donald E. Riesenberg M.D. (Senior Editor, Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine) (Senior Editor, Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine)

  4. Department of Medicine, Pritzker School of Medicine, University of Chicago, 60637, Chicago, Illinois, USA

    Leif B. Sorensen M.D., Ph.D. (Associate Chief) (Associate Chief)

  5. Geriatric Medicine, Portland V.A. Medical Center, 97207, Portland, Oregon, USA

    John R. Walsh M.D. (Chief) (Chief)

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© 1990 Springer Science+Business Media New York

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Kane, R.A. (1990). Instruments to Assess Functional Status. In: Cassel, C.K., Riesenberg, D.E., Sorensen, L.B., Walsh, J.R. (eds) Geriatric Medicine. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-2093-8_6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-2093-8_6

  • Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4757-2095-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4757-2093-8

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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