The Acute Care Mobility Assessment is a promising tool for evaluating day-to-day mobility in clinical settings: linguistic and convergent-validity in Danish geriatric patients.

OBJECTIVE

Low in-hospital mobility is highly prevalent and can cause hospital-associated-disability. In both research and clinical care, valid and reliable outcome measures of in-hospital mobility are necessary. The Acute Care Mobility Assessment (ACMA) provides a single measure of hospital out-of-bed mobility and may be a promising tool. The purpose of this study was to perform a cross-cultural validation to facilitate international uptake.

METHODS

We performed a linguistic validation (translation, cognitive interviewing, cultural adaptation) of the ACMA in Denmark and investigated the convergent-validity of the Danish version (ACMA-DK) in older hospitalized (+65) Danish adults by evaluating the correlation between the ACMA-DK and 24-hour mobility assessed as number of steps, time spent walking, and upright time by SENS motion® activity monitors.

RESULTS

The linguistic validation showed ACMA-DK to be well understood and accepted by the respondents. We found a moderate positive correlation between the ACMA-DK and both steps and time spent walking (r > 0.5). Linear regression analyses suggested that for every 1-point increase in the ACMA-DK, steps increased by 363 and time spent walking by 0.14 hours.

CONCLUSION

The ACMA-DK was cross-culturally adapted and was positively associated with out-of-bed mobility (steps taken and time spent walking). The ACMA is a potential tool for evaluating day-to-day out-of-bed mobility in clinical settings.