The ability to get up from the floor after a fall is a basic functional skill required for autonomy. Accordingly, the inability to safely get down and up from the floor or to perform a floor transfer (FT) may indicate decreased mobility and/or increased frailty. Since one in three community-dwelling senior citizens aged 65 years or older will fall at least once each year, a valid test of FT ability is critical to guide interventions that promote optimal functional mobility. The FT test is a simple, performance-based test that can be administered quickly and easily in clinical and home-care settings to determine the patient’s ability to safely and successfully get down and up from the floor using any movement strategy and without time restriction. The primary purpose of this cross-sectional study was to determine the intra-rater reliability and validity of the FT test as an alternative to several widely used but time-consuming measures of physical disability, frailty, and functional mobility. The secondary purpose was to provide descriptive data for the FT test outcome groups.
