Measuring change in activities of daily living in nursing home residents with moderate to severe cognitive impairment

Table 1 The seven items included in the MDS-ADL Long Form scale.

Item*	Description
Bed mobility	This includes how a resident moves and turns their body position while in bed.
Transfer	This includes how a resident moves between surfaces such as a bed and chair.
Locomotion	This includes how a resident moves between locations in their room and corridor outside their room.
Dressing,	This includes how a resident puts on, fastens, takes off all items of street clothing.
Eating	This relates to how a resident eats and drinks, including other means of intake of nourishments such as tube feeding.
Toilet use	This includes how a resident uses a toilet, commode, bedpan or urinal and transfer on and off the toilet.
Personal hygiene	This relates to how personal hygiene is maintained, including combing hair, brushing teeth, washing and drying face and hands but excluding baths and showers.

* Categories of response to each item include: 0 (total independence or no or little help with an activity), 1 (supervision provided 3 or more times during last 7 days), 2 (limited assistance by staff with the resident highly involved in activity), 3 (extensive assistance by staff with the resident performing part of the activity), 4 (total dependence – full staff participation in activity during the entire 7 days) and 8 (activity did not occur). For this scale, category 8 was combined category 4.

ISSN: 1471-2318