T. Kaasa et al., THE EDMONTON FUNCTIONAL ASSESSMENT-TOOL - PRELIMINARY DEVELOPMENT ANDEVALUATION FOR USE IN PALLIATIVE CARE, Journal of pain and symptom management, 13(1), 1997, pp. 10-19
The purpose of this article is to report the development and psychomet
ric testing of the Edmonton Functional Assessment Tool (EFAT). The EFA
T was developed as a functional outcome measure for use with a palliat
ive care population. The assessment identified ten functional activiti
es important to patients even in the terminal stage of their illness.
In addition, a global performance status rating (PS) asked for an over
all judgment of functional status after the ten EFAT functions were ev
aluated. Tests for interrater reliability and concurrent validity were
conducted on a sample of 25 inpatients on the Palliative Care Unit (P
CU) at the Edmonton General Hospital (EGH) who were evaluated independ
ently by two raters. Interrater reliability of the EFAT expressed as a
n intraclass correlation (ICC) was established at 0.88. The interrater
reliability of these two raters was 0.71 for the Karnofsky Performanc
e Status (KPS) and 0.81 for the performance status measure of the East
ern Cooperative Oncology croup (ECOG). Concurrent validity of the EFAT
was demonstrated by correlating the total EFAT score with the KPS (r
= -0.79, P = 0.0001) and the ECOG (r = 0.85, P = 0.0001). The total EF
AT score was also strongly correlated with the global PS rating scale
(r = 0.90 P = 0.0001). Construct validity of the EFAT was tested with
a sample of 101 patients admitted to the unit, which was later divided
into the unit group (N = 88) and the home group (N = 13). Our finding
s provided initial evidence that the EFAT distinguished between the fu
nctional status of these two groups. The results of this preliminary s
tudy suggest that the EFAT requires further research and development,
but shows potential to evolve as a useful clinical tool in palliative
care. (C) U.S. Cancer Pain Relief Committee, 1997.