New complementary perspectives for inpatient physical function assessment: matched clinician-report and patient-report short form measures from the PROMIS adult physical function item bank.

Purpose: To develop two item content-matched, precise, score-level targeted inpatient physical function (PF) short form (SF) measures: one clinician-reported, one patient-reported. Items were derived from PROMIS PF bank content; scores are reported on the PROMIS PF T-score metric.

Methods: The PROMIS PF item bank was reviewed for content measuring lower-level PF status (T-scores 10-50) with high item set score-level reliability (≥ 0.

Weakness and strength training in persons with poststroke hemiplegia: rationale, method, and efficacy.

Several converging lines of contemporary evidence suggest that weakness presents a more serious compromise to movement function in poststroke hemiplegia than spasticity. This review examines the clinical and functional phenomena of weakness in poststroke hemiplegia, currently available evidence identifying physiologic substrates contributing to weakness, and reports of early investigations involving high-resistance training targeted at improving strength and the transfer of strength to improvements in functional capacity. Based on this information, we describe some unsolved problems and indicate some likely lines of development to increase our knowledge regarding how resistance training can be included in effective stroke rehabilitation.