Activities of Daily Living

Introduction:

“Activities of daily living (ADL)” is a term coined in order to refer to the daily self-care activities of individuals in the healthcare sector. As stated by Mehrholz et al. (2012). The healthcare professionals often use an individual’s ability or inability to execute ADL as a form of measurement of their functional condition. In this context, a personal interview of G.F. University Professor Mr. X was conducted during a health campaign held on the University campus. Mr. X was forty eight years old and an old employee of this institution. He has almost twenty years of experience as a professor. He was one of the Physics Professors in the science department. The purpose of the interview and the questionnaire was to understand the ADL of the professor and also recognize weather his health conditions requires medical assistance (Pirsiavash and Ramanan 2012).

Questionnaire:

The interview was conducted using the questionnaire as an effective tool. The set of questions were designed based the general “Activities of daily living (ADL)” of an individual. The main aim of the questions prepared was to understand the functional activities of the interviewee. The set of questio

The RUG-ADL score of Mr. X sums up to 9 (Klinger et al. 2013). 

Ethical considerations:

The Codes of the ethics for nurses has been designed for the nursing professionals at all levels in Australia. It does not only confine to the people from nursing background but also designed for people receiving nursing care, agencies responsible for the protection of consumers, managers of health care, as well as the general community. It summarizes the different facets of commitment of nursing professionals towards the people under their care, respecting, safeguarding and promoting their fundamental rights.

The main motive of the Code of Ethics for Nurses is to :

• Recognize and characterize the basic values and standards of ethics, which is followed by the nursing professionals and that is standardized by the professional nursing guidelines.
• To serve as a reference to nurses in order to help them evaluate their conduct.
• To serve as a guideline to the recipients of healthcare as to what they can expect from the nursing professionals.

The Code of Ethics for Nurses states that the nurses should–

1. Value for the quality nursing for all individuals.
2. Show appreciation of respect and kindness towards others and oneself.
3. Appreciate the diversity of people.
4. Provide quality healthcare service to all
5. Appreciate and respect for the decisions made by the patients
6. Maintain the safe and hygienic environment
7. Manage and secure patient information
8. Promote wellbeing of the patients and other individuals by maintaining a socially, ecologically and economically sound environment (Nursingmidwiferyboard.gov.au, 2016).

Evaluation of the code of ethics that was followed in Mr. X’s case -

Code statement 1 : Nurses should value the accept the standard nursing care procedures and acknowledge the responsibility for the care provided by them .(Johnstone 2015) . In case of patient it is the sole responsibility of a nurse to determine whether or not a person is entitled for a nursing care, by evaluating his day to day activities. The questionnaire designed for Mr. X highlights the activities of daily life (ADL), and helps in determining whether or not, Mr. X requires assistance or quality nursing care.

Code statement 2: Nurses should value respect for the customers of healthcare, and continually protect the dignity of a patient or for an individual who might require health care(Ahpra.gov.au, 2016). It also includes coping up or the level of tolerance shown by a nurse, with regard to a patient requiring assistance especially older adults, and realizing the helplessness or vulnerability of the individual under care. Considering the case of Mr. X, who is short tempered and usually disgusted by the number of questions being asked to him. A sense for respect and tolerance was maintained during the session.

Code Statement 7: Nurses should maintain the confidentiality and privacy of each person under their care and should not disclose any information to any unauthorized person. In addition to that, the information should only be accessed in order to provide quality health care. All the information provided by Mr. X is kept confidential and all the interactions are purely professional and private in nature. The information will only be used to determine the need of quality health care. 

ADL Practices of the interviewee:

According to the “Resource Utilisation Groups (RUG-ADL)” in a community service a score of (16 – 18) RUG-ADL or above reflects serious condition and thus, requires a referral to the hospital or aged care provision placement. According to Eckner (2014), these scores may trigger “Occupational Therapy” assessment or elevation in the tools and equipment in the community or the inpatient setting. On considering the case of Mr. X, he was a middle-aged man who required the least assistance. According to the interview conducted using the questionnaire as a tool, it was found that the RUG-ADL score of Mr. X was calculated as 9. As per the RUG-ADL scoring scale, values between 16 to 18 reflects serious condition. Since the score of Mr. X was reported as nine, therefore, he dons not require referral to a hospital (Pompeu et al. 2012). 

According to the interview, Mr. X has normal ADL, and he does not require assistance in any of his daily activities ranging from mobility to eating habits. This reflects his body functioning is almost normal and stable. The only exception is the consumption of medicine daily for high blood pressure and often requires the assistance of a chair during a long stay in the classroom (Sjölund et al. 2014).

As discussed by Verhaaren et al. (2013), there are few determinants that play a significant role in identifying the reason of his health condition and ADL. The first determinant is stress. Since, Mr. X was a professor, the daily activities that he performed in the class which involves tension about controlling the class discipline, demonstration, conducting practical, checking answer scripts, etc. all piles up to cause hypertension. This ultimately leads to high blood pressure. The second determinant of health is age. Generally, high blood pressure is observed in middle aged person. His age and high blood pressure cause him to get stressed out during a long period of class room activity (Semenza et al. 2014). 

Conclusion:

This report presents a brief analysis of the interview conducted on Mr. X who is a professor of the G.F. University of Australia. “Activities of daily living (ADL)” is a term coined in order to refer to the daily self-care activities of individuals in the healthcare sector. The healthcare professionals often use an individual’s ability or inability to execute ADL as a form of measurement of their functional condition. The interview was conducted using the questionnaire as an effective tool. The set of questions were designed based the general "Activities of daily living (ADL)" of Mr. X. The questionnaire contained a set of six questions which were related to the daily activities of the interviewee. As per the report of the interview, it can be concluded that the physical activities and functions of Mr. X were normal except assistance of chair during class was taken due to high blood pressure. The determinants of his condition were identified as his age and stress. 

References:

Ahpra.gov.au. (2016). Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency - Search. 

DESJARDINS, M. and SAVOYSKI, J., 2014. Activities of Daily Living.Pediatric Skills for Occupational Therapy Assistants, p.342.

Eckner, J., 2014. High blood pressure-determinants and risks.

Johnstone, M.J., 2015. Bioethics: a nursing perspective. Elsevier Health Sciences

Klinger, E., Kadri, A., Sorita, E., Le Guiet, J.L., Coignard, P., Fuchs, P., Leroy, L., Du Lac, N., Servant, F. and Joseph, P.A., 2013. AGATHE: A tool for personalized rehabilitation of cognitive functions based on simulated activities of daily living. IRBM, 34(2), pp.113-118.

Mehrholz, J., Hädrich, A., Platz, T., Kugler, J. and Pohl, M., 2012. Electromechanical and robot‐assisted arm training for improving generic activities of daily living, arm function, and arm muscle strength after stroke.The Cochrane Library.

Nursingmidwiferyboard.gov.au. (2016). Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia - Professional standards. [online] Available at: https://www.nursingmidwiferyboard.gov.au/Codes-Guidelines-Statements/Professional-standards.aspx [Accessed 22 Jun. 2016].

Pirsiavash, H. and Ramanan, D., 2012, June. Detecting activities of daily living in first-person camera views. In Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), 2012 IEEE Conference on (pp. 2847-2854). IEEE.

Pompeu, J.E., dos Santos Mendes, F.A., da Silva, K.G., Lobo, A.M., de Paula Oliveira, T., Zomignani, A.P. and Piemonte, M.E.P., 2012. Effect of Nintendo Wii™-based motor and cognitive training on activities of daily living in patients with Parkinson's disease: A randomised clinical trial.Physiotherapy, 98(3), pp.196-204.

Semenza, C., Meneghello, F., Arcara, G., Burgio, F., Gnoato, F., Facchini, S., Benavides-Varela, S., Clementi, M. and Butterworth, B., 2014. A new clinical tool for assessing numerical abilities in neurological diseases: numerical activities of daily living. Frontiers in aging neuroscience, 6.

Sjölund, B.M., Wimo, A., Qiu, C., Engström, M. and von Strauss, E., 2014. Time trends in prevalence of activities of daily living (ADL) disability and survival: comparing two populations (aged 78+ years) living in a rural area in Sweden. Archives of gerontology and geriatrics, 58(3), pp.370-375.

Verhaaren, B.F., Vernooij, M.W., de Boer, R., Hofman, A., Niessen, W.J., van der Lugt, A. and Ikram, M.A., 2013. High blood pressure and cerebral white matter lesion progression in the general population. Hypertension,61(6), pp.1354-1359.