Fugl-Meyer Assessment (FMA)
What It Measures
The Fugl-Meyer Assessment is the long-standing standard for measuring how much movement and sensation a person has recovered after a stroke. Rather than asking what someone can accomplish, it looks at the underlying impairment — whether a shoulder can move independently of the elbow, whether a hand can grasp, whether the person can feel a light touch.
Every item is scored the same simple way: 0 if the person cannot perform it, 1 if partially, 2 if fully. Five domains are covered — motor function, sensation, balance, passive joint range of motion, and joint pain — totalling 226 points across roughly 155 items. Motor function carries 100 of those, split 66 for the upper extremity and 34 for the lower.
Further Reading
Additional Notes
Licensing Notes: Protocols for both upper and lower extremity are posted free by the university at gu.se. Equipment is minimal — a reflex hammer, cotton wool, a pencil, a tennis ball, a small round container, and a chair. No fee or license is required, though the university's protocol pages are the source to use rather than a secondhand copy.
Learn More: Almost nobody administers the full 226-point version. Subscales stand alone, and the upper extremity motor scale (FMA-UE, 0–66) is the one that dominates stroke research and rehabilitation practice; it takes 20 to 30 minutes on its own.