Activities of Daily Living

Activities of daily living (ADL's) is a term that is commonly used in the medical industry, especially when the nursing of an elderly person is involved. Any activity or task that an individual undertakes throughout the course of the day, constitutes the instrumental activities. Eating, walking, personal grooming and hygiene all come under the list of activities.

Many medical institutions and even medical insurance companies conduct a study of these activities of certain individuals that require their attention. Elderly people, people with mental illnesses, handicapped people or people suffering from some crippling disease are usually put through this study. The reason for carrying out this study is to assess the functionality of a person. Once this has been ascertained, the health professionals can determine what type of treatment and nursing conditions the individual in question requires.

Importance of Activities Checklist

In a study carried out, it was observed that almost 50% of people who turn 65 in any given year in America, enter into an old age home because they are unable to carry out these activities. What this means is that these people are unable to take care of themselves, and require assistance to do so. Most people seeking admission into a nursing home will leave within a year, but 25% of the patients end up staying for more than a year's time. There are 6 basic activities that a person is expected to perform, and if an individual cannot perform at least 2 of these activities independently, the nursing home will admit them.

The nursing homes maintain a checklist of these activities, to ascertain if a person should be admitted or not. The cost of admitting a patient into nursing homes is quite high, and as a result they need to know for sure, if the person genuinely requires to be admitted. This is the primary importance of this checklist.

Activities List
As mentioned earlier, there are basically 6 ADL's that any health professional will consider a part of this list. These activities are as follows.

• Eating
• Personal grooming and hygiene
• Dressing and undressing
• Toilet activities
• Moving from one place to another
• Elimination

These activities need to be performed independently in order for an individual to take care of himself/herself. The most common cases where people are unable to independently perform their ADL's, is in the case of elderly people. Therefore, the analysis of these activities for elderly people is of utmost importance. Based on the results of the analysis, it can be decided what sort of nursing conditions a particular individual will require.

Instrumental Activities of Daily Living
Apart from the fundamental ADL's which a person needs to perform, there is a list of instrumental ADL's that determine if a person is capable of living in a community independently, or if they must do so with the aid of somebody.

• Cooking
• Taking medicines
• Shopping for groceries
• Using the telephone
• Managing money
• Care of others
• Care of pets
• Doing housework
• Mandatory safety procedures and regulations
• Knowledge of emergency hotlines

If it is found that a person can perform their fundamental ADL's, but are unable to perform their instrumental ADL's, it is probably best to assign someone to look after or nurse that particular individual.

The most common use of studying these activities is felt by medical insurance companies. Since they are mostly the ones who will foot the bills for the treatment of a lot of conditions, they wish to ensure that the individual genuinely require the treatment. Some people may try to con these companies in order to get the insurance money, so these companies carry out these tests very carefully to ascertain the true functionality and mobility of the individual.

Before a person is actually admitted into a nursing home for treatment, everyone must be made well aware of what activities of daily living they can and cannot perform. Elderly people and people with chronic illnesses are likely to be more susceptible to these tests more often than other people. Monitoring their functionality can only benefit their family members and friends in the long run.