HEALTH-STATUS ASSESSMENT OF THE ELDERLY

The elderly are a heterogeneous population group who range from well a nd completely independent individuals to a smaller proportion who are frail, require help and are high users of the healthcare system. Since health is a state of wellbeing which includes the domains of social, spiritual, psychological and physical function, each of these domains must be evaluated when we are measuring the health of older adults. In this article, we discuss some of the more important aspects of these domains. If we focus exclusively on the diseases which occur in older adults we will miss important aspects of their health status. We may m iss the interactions of several different disease processes occurring in 1 individual, and the impact of those diseases on the individual's ability to live independently and his or her quality of life. In this article, we not only justify the measurement of function, cognition, a ffect and quality of life in the elderly but we also describe the nece ssary measurement qualities of instruments used to measure health-rela ted quality of life in the elderly. We provide some examples of measur ement approaches with which we as researchers and health workers are f amiliar.