Why Have a GCM Do a Functional Assessment After The Holidays

If you are an adult child, did your visit to elderly parents unnerve you enough that you are going to call a geriatric care manager to do a geriatric assessment?  If so– great idea. What will the geriatric care manager do to solve your elderly parent’s problems? Part of the geriatric assessment is a functional assessment.

What is a functional assessment? . Done by a geriatric care manager (GCM), it measures of the basic skills of role function of an older person. This includes measurement of the performance of basic activities of daily living (ADLs), such as bathing, grooming, dressing, eating, transferring, toileting, and more advanced instrumental activities of daily living (IADLs), including handling financial matters appropriately, finding one’s way out of the home and back, and managing medication regimens. It measures how an older person functions is her environment and helps him function better.

Both the functional and psychosocial assessment done by the geriatric care manager will help you have that much needed, post holiday feeling, “ peace of mind”. Another post holiday sigh of relief is a geriatric assessment will you a map of the specific problems that need to be solved and how to solve them –. “ Whew” what a deep breath you can take after all the holiday joy and stress.

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