Physical therapists possess expertise in managing the recovery processes for many areas of medicine, including life-altering events that require a heavy amount of medical attention and consistent effort to overcome. Activities of Daily Living, or ADLs, are a guide for physical therapists tasked with helping a patient return to independence as soon as possible. They are joined by Instrumental Activities of Daily Living, or IADLs.
This article will help you understand the differences between these two categories, and how they operate together on a patient’s road to recovery.
How to categorize activities
Think of yourself when you were small – a brand new human being who needed to learn the basics of operating their body through consistent practice. Before you could learn how to play sports, you had to learn how to get from point A to point B (first by crawling, and later by walking). Before you could serve your own meals, you had to learn how to chew and swallow – the very basics of a task as essential as eating.
The best way to think of ADLs is that they are the most basic skills a person needs to know to survive, akin to the skills you learned as a small child. The distinction between ADLs and IADLs is that you cannot learn IADLs – despite their importance to daily life as an adult – before you master the ADLs.
There are many activities that could fall into the IADL category, as there are plenty of tasks that we learn to complete in order to function in the day-to-day. As for the basic ADLs, therapists place emphasis on six specific activities for independent survival:
- Ambulating (walking, using a wheelchair, etc.)
- Eating
- Grooming
- Toileting
- Bathing
- Transferring (moving the body from one point to another).
Building on the basics
For each ADL, there is a set of IADLs that would naturally follow for a patient who needs to re-teach and re-learn. When physical therapists create their treatment plans, they help patients set basic ADL and IADL goals in conjunction with each other. This helps to organize the specific activities the patient will repeat during treatment.
For example, a patient may need to learn to walk or operate an assisting device like a wheelchair before they can go about cleaning a living area. They would need to re-learn eating before they can re-learn to heat up their food, serve it, and clean up after themselves.
Many hospital settings have specialized areas specifically to re-teach ADLs and IADLs in a home-like setting. These ADL rooms are equipped with bedrooms, bathrooms, and kitchens, and physical therapists use these spaces to re-teach their patients for an easier transition to actual home life.
The implications of a serious illness or injury for a patient’s daily life are often discouraging. However, the combination of a physical therapist’s expertise in re-teaching ADLs and IADLs, the support of family and friends, and the patient’s consistent effort is a powerful force in overcoming hardship.
Contact Core 3 Physical Therapy today to get in touch with a team that provides invaluable support to their patients throughout the healing process. Our three locations throughout Pennsylvania are well-equipped to serve patients facing a wide variety of challenges. While referrals are optional to access our services, physicians often refer their patients to us with the knowledge that we will hold our patients’ well-being as our top priority.
