Functional Assessment Scale (FAST)
The common Palliative Performance Score (PPS), for example, evaluates activity levels, ambulation, and mental status — and uses a chart to assign a PPS. The PPS paints a picture of the patient and provides an indicator of how he/she is doing compared to an otherwise well, functioning member of the population at that same age. In addition to having an assigned PPS, dementia patients are scored in seven categories of increasing debility through a Functional Assessment Staging Test (FAST), which helps confirm that diagnosis.Other diseases have their own specific tests.
Functional Assessment Scale (FAST)
1 = No difficulty either subjectively or objectively.
2 = Complains of forgetting location of objects. Subjective work difficulties.
3 = Decreased job functioning evident to co-workers. Difficulty in traveling to new locations. Decreased organizational capacity. *
4 = Decreased ability to perform complex task, (e.g., planning dinner for guests, handling personal finances, such as forgetting to pay bills, etc.)
5 = Requires assistance in choosing proper clothing to wear for the day, season or occasion, (e.g. pt may wear the same clothing repeatedly, unless super-vised.*
6 = Occasionally or more frequently over the past weeks. * for the following
A) Improperly putting on clothes without assistance or cueing .
B) Unable to bathe properly ( not able to choose proper water temp)
C) Inability to handle mechanics of toileting (e.g., forget to flush the toilet, does not wipe properly or properly dispose of toilet tissue)
D) Urinary incontinence
E) Fecal incontinence
7 =
A) Ability to speak limited to approximately ≤ 6 intelligible different words in the course of an average day or in the course of an intensive interview.
B) Speech ability is limited to the use of a single intelligible word in an average day or in the course of an intensive interview
C) Ambulatory ability is lost (cannot walk without personal assistance.)
D) Cannot sit up without assistance (e.g., the individual will fall over if there are not lateral rests [arms] on the chair.)
E) Loss of ability to smile.
F) Loss of ability to hold up head independently.
*Scored primarily on information obtained from a knowledgeable informant. Psychopharmacology Bulletin, 1988 24:653-659.