How older people nurses assess cognitive function through daily observation

Abstract

Until a valid instrument becomes available, nursing staff must standardise daily observations themselves. This paper describes input to achieve this.

Development of an evidence‐based fall risk assessment tool and evaluation of interrater reliability and nurses’ perceptions of the tool's clarity and usability

“…It is likely that difficulties arose because assessment of the five aspects of cognitive function depended on the clinical judgment of individual nurses and the nurses had to decide how these items should be assessed. Furthermore, assessing cognitive impairment on admission can be difficult and nurses often require several days of observation to reach a final judgment on cognitive function (Persoon, Van der Cruijsen, Schlattmann, Simmes, & Van Achterberg, ). It is important to assess cognitive impairment accurately because it is an important risk factor that caused 34% of the falls in a study by Tzeng ().…”

Last three days of life in the hospital: a comparison of symptoms, signs and treatments in the young old and the oldest old patients using the Resident Assessment Instrument for Palliative Care

“…Results from a study suggested that nurses recorded their observations of older patients’ cognitive function based on their own discretion and decided themselves what and how much to record. The nurses recorded objective observational behaviour along with their own interpretations (Persoon et al. , 2010).…”