Agitation Assessment is important in deciding better manage sedation and agitation to best comfort patients; reduce the length of stay in medical facilities, and test the nature and extent of agitation in patients following a brain injury or when dealing with elderly or nursing home patients with dementia, Alzheimer's patients, sedated intensive care unit patients, and critically ill infants and children. There are many scales used for patients who can communicate and those who can't. To get the agitation assessment that fits the needs of the patient, try the following.
Instructions
1. Ask your medical care professionals about the differences between the most used scales: The Ramsey Scale, the Motor Activity Assessment Scale, the Vancouver Interaction and Calmness Scale, the Agitated Behavior Scale, the Riker Sedation/Agitation Scale, and the State Behavior Scale. Find out what scale nurses in your facility are most comfortable with and which scale is used for which conditions. For example, the State Behavioral Scale is the scale most commonly used for critically ill infants and children and the Agitated Behavior Scale (ABS) was developed to test the nature and extent of agitation during recovery from brain injury. The ABS is also often used for Alzheimer's patients.
2. Find out what kind of scale is used by the hospices you're considering. Most hospices use a pocket sized guide called the "Symptom Management Algorithms: A Handbook for Palliative Care" to assess and manage pain, symptoms, and agitation in terminally ill patients. Ask hospices and palliative care facilities if they use this guide.
3. Ask medical facilities if they have tried the Consciousness and Agitation Assessment Tool (CAAT), a newer system that uses changes in heart rate and blood pressure. This fuzzy inference system shows the ability to determine patient agitation, to better manage sedation, and to reduce the length of stay for sedated adult ICU patients and is thought to work better than the Ramsey Scale and the Motor Activity Assessment Scale (MAAS).
4. Ask doctors if they use assessment results to choose medicine and other methods to maximize comfort for patients, maximize meaningful communication, optimize sleep patterns, move and turn the patient, reduce noise and environmental distractions, and re-orient the patient as often as possible. You should also find out how often medical professionals reassess and document symptoms.
5. Choose a teaching hospital or a facility that uses different approaches to fit the patient's circumstances rather than fixed scales to measure agitation. Some scales, and the workers who document results, can be subjective and results can have a lot of errors.
Tags: Agitation Assessment, Behavior Scale, Activity Assessment, Activity Assessment Scale, Agitated Behavior