Keywords

activities of daily living, clinical competence, cognition disorders, decision making, frontal lobe injury, functional assessment, head injury, occupational therapy, task performance and analysis

Authors

1. Bottari, Carolina MSc, OT
2. Swaine, Bonnie PhD
3. Dutil, Elisabeth MSc, OT

Abstract

Objectives: As clinician ratings of performance-based assessments of activities of daily living (ADL) require examiners to judge the appropriateness of actions within task context, this study sought to document occupational therapists' (OTs') ability to distinguish examples of potential ADL errors of healthy adults (HA) from those of individuals with frontal lobe lesions (FLL).

Method: Eighty-two OTs were asked to identify the likely source population (HA/FLL) associated with 26 ADL errors.

Results: Only 50% of errors were related to the correct source population by more than 70% of OTs.

Conclusion: Performance-based ADL assessments allowing for the documentation of context could enhance OTs' interpretation of ADL errors.