노인의 건강사정도구에 대한 일고찰 - 신체기능 측정도구를 중심으로 -

A Study of the Scale to Measure Health Status of the Elderly - In Regard to Measures of Physical Functioning-

The major goal of caring the elderly is not to cure the patient, but rather to improve or maintain the individual functional ability. With the aged population increases, there is increasing consensus among health care workers about the importance of developing a tool to measure and evaluate the health status of the elderly. As many writers is pointing out, care of the elderly embraces the spectrum of physical-social-psychological problems and an enormous number of variables could be introudeced into the health worker's routine measurement. But such an expansive approach to measurement could have disadvantages. The purpose of this study is to introduce the measurement tools of physical functioning, perhaps the most important measure required in long-term care, which are separated into three categories of measures; general physical health, ADL, IADL. It is important that all health workers who provide care to the elderly incorporate the concepts of functional health status into the routine assessments. And continuous study about reliability and validity is needed to apply those foreign tools to Korea.