NR 578 Week 2 Functional Assessment Write-Up Example

Course	NR 578 Primary Care Management of Older Adults
Week	2
Paper type	Functional assessment write-up
Length	About 1,100 words, 5 pages
Format	APA 7 student paper
School	Chamberlain University
Program	MSN, Adult-Gerontology Primary Care NP (AGPCNP)
Updated	October 2026

Free sample paper for NR 578 Week 2

Functional Assessment Write-Up for an 87-Year-Old Living Alone: An Ordinary Week, Task by Task, With Who Does Each Now and the Month It Changed Hands

Student Name

College of Nursing, Chamberlain University

NR 578: Primary Care Management of Older Adults

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

What this page is doingThe write-up reads as an account of an ordinary week, names who does each task now and dates every change, so the order in which tasks were given up becomes visible.

Functional Assessment Write-Up for an 87-Year-Old Living Alone: An Ordinary Week, Task by Task, With Who Does Each Now and the Month It Changed Hands

Sources

This assessment draws on two informants, interviewed separately on the same afternoon in the clinic: the patient, 87, who lives alone in a two-story row house, and the patient's daughter, who lives 25 minutes away and works full time as a school bus dispatcher. Where the two accounts differ, both are recorded. This patient is a composite assembled from cases at my primary care placement. The tasks follow the basic activities of daily living described by Katz (1963) and the instrumental activities described by Lawton and Brody (1969), but they are written as the patient's actual week rather than as scores.

Basic Activities

Bathing. Until August, the patient showered in the upstairs tub-shower. Since the fall in the kitchen in August, the patient has washed at the sink every day and has not stepped into the tub. Patient's account: "I don't trust my legs in there." Daughter's account: the same. Nobody helps.

Dressing. Self, slower. The patient now sits on the bed to put on socks and has switched to slip-on shoes since September. No help.

Toileting, including at night. The bathroom is upstairs, next to the bedroom. The patient gets up twice a night. No falls at night so far. A night light was added by the daughter in September, after the patient bumped a knee on the doorframe.

Getting in and out of a chair and bed. Self. The patient pushes up from the armrests and takes a moment before walking.

Continence. Urgency at night, no accidents reported by either informant.

Eating. Self.

What this page is doingEach task records who does it now and since when, which shows whether this is someone who has always managed this way or someone whose week changed in the autumn.

Instrumental Activities

Money. The daughter took over paying bills in March, after the electric company sent a shut-off notice for a bill the patient believed had been paid. Before March, the patient had paid every bill by check for 60 years, keeping the stubs in a shoebox by the phone.

Medications. The daughter has filled a weekly pillbox every Sunday since May, after finding two days' doses still in the box on a Wednesday. Before May, the patient managed independently.

Laundry. The daughter, since June. The washer is in the basement, down a steep set of stairs without a rail on one side.

Housekeeping. A cleaner every two weeks since April, paid by the patient's son, who lives out of state.

Shopping. The patient walks six blocks to the Saturday farmers' market. The daughter shops for heavier items on Wednesday evenings. The patient wants to keep Saturdays.

Meals. Self. Simple meals: soup, eggs, toast. Patient's account: "I cook every day." Daughter's account: "Mostly sandwiches now." Both recorded.

Telephone. Self, but misses calls because of hearing loss; the daughter now calls twice, a minute apart, if there is no answer.

Transportation. The patient drives one mile to church on Sunday mornings and nowhere else. The daughter is uneasy about this and raised it separately.

Where the Two Accounts Differ

The patient and the daughter agree on most tasks. They differ on three. On meals, the patient describes cooking every day and the daughter describes mostly sandwiches; both are recorded because the difference itself is information. On the telephone, the patient says calls are answered and the daughter reports now calling twice. On driving, the patient describes it as no problem and the daughter is uneasy. Where accounts differ, the write-up does not choose one; it records both and notes what would settle the question, such as a look in the refrigerator or a driving evaluation.

What the Patient Wants Kept

Asked which of these tasks mattered most, the patient named three: the Saturday walk to the market, cooking supper and the Sunday drive to church. The patient said nothing about bills or laundry, which have already moved to the daughter without complaint. These priorities shape what the next weeks protect and what can safely be handed over. The daughter, asked the same question about the time this takes, said the four hours a week were manageable but that more would not be, which sets a limit any future plan has to respect.

What this page is doingRecording which tasks the patient wants kept turns the functional account into the basis for a plan rather than a list of losses.

The Order of Change

Reading the dates in sequence: housekeeping in April, money in March, medications in May, laundry in June, bathing in August after the fall. The first things given up were the ones that depend on memory and organization, bills and pills, before the physical ones. That order matters. It suggests the change may not be only about strength and balance, and it is the reason a cognitive assessment is planned next.

What this page is doingPlacing the dates in order turns a list of tasks into evidence, because the sequence points to cognition before physical decline.

Measures Taken in Clinic

Walking speed over a four-meter course: 0.6 meters a second, which is slow. Timed up-and-go: 17 seconds. Grip strength measured but not interpreted against a scale. Weight 132 pounds, down from 141 a year ago, without trying. Exhaustion: the patient reports feeling that everything is an effort "most days." Several of these are among the features used to describe physical frailty (Fried et al., 2001): unintended weight loss, slow walking and exhaustion. That description is a way of naming risk, not a judgment on the person, and it is recorded here in those terms.

Risks the Week Contains

The week holds four risks visible from the account: the basement stairs without a rail, which the daughter now uses instead; the tub, which the patient already avoids; the night trips to the bathroom twice a night; and the Sunday drive. The first two are already managed by changes the household made. The night trips and the drive are not, and both will be addressed in the next visits. The night trips call for a check on what is driving the urgency, including the timing of the evening fluids and any diuretic; the drive calls for the cognitive assessment that is already planned. Neither is a reason to change the patient's arrangements today, but both are named so they are not forgotten.

What the Write-Up Supports

The patient manages basic care alone, with bathing changed since the fall. Four instrumental tasks have moved to the daughter or a paid cleaner in the past nine months. The daughter now spends about four hours a week on the patient's tasks, on top of full-time work. The patient's stated priority is to keep the Saturday walk and the Sunday drive.

References

Fried, L. P., Tangen, C. M., Walston, J., Newman, A. B., Hirsch, C., Gottdiener, J., Seeman, T., Tracy, R., Kop, W. J., Burke, G., & McBurnie, M. A. (2001). Frailty in older adults: Evidence for a phenotype. Journals of Gerontology: Series A, 56(3), M146-M156. https://doi.org/10.1093/gerona/56.3.M146

Katz, S., Ford, A. B., Moskowitz, R. W., Jackson, B. A., & Jaffe, M. W. (1963). Studies of illness in the aged: The index of ADL: A standardized measure of biological and psychosocial function. JAMA, 185(12), 914-919. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.1963.03060120024016

Lawton, M. P., & Brody, E. M. (1969). Assessment of older people: Self-maintaining and instrumental activities of daily living. Gerontologist, 9(3, Part 1), 179-186. https://doi.org/10.1093/geront/9.3_Part_1.179

What the NR 578 Week 2 assignment asks for

The Week 2 write-up should read as an account of an ordinary week rather than a battery of scores. Cover bathing, dressing and getting to the toilet at night, then the harder tasks: laundry, errands, money, the telephone, meals and medicines. Against each, name who does it now, since many will have moved to a relative or to nobody, and date the change. Dates matter more than totals, because the order in which tasks were given up tells a story. Most prompts want informants named and conflicting accounts recorded. Measures such as gait speed may be included, and frailty should be described as risk, not as an insult.

How this NR 578 Week 2 example is built

The write-up names the patient and daughter as informants, interviewed separately. Basic activities are recorded one by one, with bathing changed since a fall in August. Instrumental activities follow, each with who does it and the month it changed: bills in March, the pillbox in May, laundry in June. A section records where the two accounts differ, on meals, the phone and driving. Another lists the three tasks the patient wants kept. A section on the order of change notes that money and medicines went first, pointing toward cognition. Clinic measures are reported with care, and the risks the week contains close it.

Where the points sit in the NR 578 Week 2 rubric

The section that costs most is function written as reassurance, managing well at home, with nothing in the document that could support it; every line here names who does the task. A task recorded without a date loses the next row, since a reader cannot tell a lifelong pattern from a recent loss, so each change carries its month. No informant named leaves the history without an author. Conflicting accounts flattened into one lose credit; this write-up keeps both. Frailty described with respect, and the patient's own priorities recorded, earn the last rows. Measures such as gait speed earn credit only when they are tied back to the week the patient actually lives.

NR 578 Week 2 help: mistakes that cost points

Weak NR 578 Week 2 write-ups say the patient manages independently without describing a single day. Others list tasks with no dates, so nobody can tell what changed. Many name no informant or blend the patient's and family's accounts. Some report scores without saying what they mean for this person. Frailty is sometimes written in a way the patient would find insulting. If your patient's week differs, send what you know about each task and who does it now; the dates of change become the backbone of the sample. Interview the patient and a family member separately, and write down the month each task changed hands. Keep both accounts where they disagree, and ask which tasks the patient most wants to keep.

Get a NR 578 Week 2 example written to your instructions

Send the Week 2 template your classroom publishes together with whatever patient profile you were given, and a custom write-up is built into that template and returned inside 24 to 48 hours, the first one free. It comes back with the dates and the named helpers filled in, which is where most drafts of this genre are thin.

More NR 578 papers and AGPCNP samples

NR 578 Week 2 questions, answered

Does a named instrument have to appear?

Most sections want at least one and publish which. The heavier requirement is usually that the result gets converted into something about this person's week, so a slow walking speed sits next to the fact that the bin now goes out on Thursday only because a nephew does it. A tool named, scored and then left sitting there tells a reader nothing they can use.

How is frailty written up without it reading as an insult?

Attach it to observations. Frailty is a clinical state with contents: weight lost without trying, slow walking, low activity, self reported exhaustion, weak grip. Report the ones you checked and the ones you could not, then say what the state implies for recovery time after any illness or procedure. Written that way it is a finding. Written as a general impression it reads as a comment on somebody's age.

The family says one thing and the patient says another. Which goes in?

Both, labeled. Disagreement between the two accounts is itself a finding, and in this population it is often the earliest one available. Write what the patient reported, write what the informant reported, name who the informant is and how much of the week they actually see. Averaging the two into a single tidy sentence erases the most interesting thing in the assessment.

Where can I find a free NR 578 Week 2 sample paper?

This page holds the full functional assessment of the 87-year-old, task by task with dates and who does each now.

What does the order of change show in the NR 578 Week 2 write-up?

Bills and medicines moved to the daughter before any physical task changed, which suggests memory and organization were affected first and points toward a cognitive assessment.