Activities of daily living (ADLs or ADL) is a term used in healthcare to refer to people's daily self-care activities.
Health professionals often use a person's ability or inability to perform ADLs as a measurement of their functional status, particularly in regard to people with disabilities and older persons.
Basic ADLs consist of self-care tasks that include, but are not limited to:
- Functional mobility, often referred to as transferring (moving from one place to another while performing activities)
For most people, functional mobility is measured as the ability to walk, get in and out of bed, and get into and out of a chair; the broader definition above is useful for people with different physical abilities who are still able to get around independently.
- Bathing and showering (washing oneself)
- Dressing
- Self-feeding (not including cooking or chewing and swallowing)
- Personal hygiene and grooming (including brushing/combing/styling hair)
- Toilet hygiene (getting to the toilet, cleaning oneself, and getting back up)
One way to think about basic ADLs is that they are the things many people do when they get up in the morning and get ready to go out of the house: get out of bed, go to the toilet, bathe, dress, groom, and eat.
See reference for details. Adapted from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Internet. Accessed on January 18, 2016.