Printed from the online version of Medical care of older persons in residential aged care facilities (4th edition) - www.racgp.org.au/silverbook

Barthel Index – activities of daily living (modified)

The Barthel Index is a simple to administer tool for assessing self care and mobility activities of daily living. It is widely used in geriatric assessment settings. Reliability, validity and overall utility are rated as good to excellent. Information is gained from observation, self report or informant report. It takes approximately 5/10 minutes to complete if the observational method is used.²⁶²

Guidelines for scoring:

The index should be used as a record of what a patient does, not as a record of what a patient could do
The main aim is to establish degree of independence from any help, physical or verbal, however minor and for whatever reason
The need for supervision renders the patient not independent
Usually the patient's performance over the preceding 24/48 hours is important, but occasionally longer periods will be relevant
Middle categories imply that the patient supplies over 50% of the effort
Use of aids to be independent is allowed.

Maximum score is 100. Low scores on individual items highlight areas of need.

Reprinted with permission. Mahoney FI, Bethel D. Functional evaluation: the Bethel Index. Maryland State Med J 1965;14:56–61

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