Question

Briefly compare and contrast Katz ADLS Functional Assessment tool with Lawton IADL Functional Assessment tool. See your text for these tools. Chapter 31
What role does a functional assessment tool have in planning for care of an individual?
Why would one use one and not the other?
Refer to JARVIS chapter 31

Answer 1

Index activities of daily living tools:- most efficient tools used for functional assessment of an individual/ older adult. It shows us the status or measurements of an older adult /individual's ability to carry out his/ her daily living activities independently.

Katz ADl tool:- is widely used for assessing basic activities of daily life by an individual or older adult. It has six parameters like bathing , dressing, transferring,continence and feeding. Nowadays it has developed a higher grade scale also .It unable to detect small or minimal changes seen in the rehabilitation of an individual.It is user friendly as it is created in a common language used by both individual and doctors. we can easily compare it's baseline measurements to periodic measurements of an individual .It is mostly used by older adults.

Lawton ADL tool:- it is a tool used for the assessment of complex activities of daily life . It is mostly used to detect the improvements or deterioration of measurements of daily life activities. it usually has eight parameters of heavy complex activities . It is limition includes in self reporting or surrogate reporting methods of administration rather than demonstration which may lead to over or under ability estimations.It can be used by older adults but best for institutional or community use. It avoids gender bias and is widely used for research purpose.

Roles of functional assessment tools is the give us a clear picture about the improvements or deterioration of health status of an individual. It motivates older adults/ individual to make an effort to carry out their daily life activities.It gives a practitioner to make an overall good care plan for an older adult/individual.

Now why we use Katz more than Lawton ADL tools is because it's user friendly for an individual or older adult , contain six basic daily life parameters and moreover it has a common language for individual and doctor and it can be self reported.