Documenting Dementia Using Assessment Tools

Chapter 16: Documenting Dementia Using Assessment Tools

Overview:

• Focuses on the purpose of geriatric assessment tools
• Discusses the types of geriatric assessment tools
• Describes short cognitive tests for assessing mental health status
• Includes a variety of tests for behavioural and emotional assessment

Description:

This chapter explores the use of a variety of different geriatric assessment tools and discusses their purposes. It focuses particularly on assessment tools designed for emotional, mental and behavioural assessment.

Topics:

• Geriatric Assessment Tools
  • Why Use Them At All?
  • Types Of Geriatric Assessment Tools
• Assessing And Documenting Mental Function
  • Mental Health Status Tools
  • Short Cognitive Tests
  • Behavioural Assessment
  • Assessing And Documenting Emotional Health
• In Summary
• References
• Suggested Reading

Speaker / Author:

John Hurley MBBS (London), D Obst RCOG (UK), MCRP (UK), FAFRM
John is a physician in geriatric and rehabilitation medicine at the Queen Elizabeth Centre in Ballarat, a provincial city in Australia. He is a past chairman of the Australian Geriatric Society’s Victorian branch (1986) and his committee memberships have included: Advisory Committee on Prosthetics and Orthotics to the Health Commission of Victoria (1978), chairman of the Extended Care Working Party, Health Commission of Victoria (1982), Small Rural Hospitals Task Force and Rural Health Advisory Committee to the Ministry of Health (1994).

John is currently a member of the Dementia Task Force and Healthstreams. Since 1982 he has been clinical instructor at Melbourne University Clinical School and his publications include a number of chapters in Challenge of Ageing (Churchill Livingstone, 1984) and more recently, Drugs and Elderly People, a Queen Elizabeth publication on medication and the elderly. His papers include Queen Elizabeth Behavioural Assessment Graphical System (BAGS) (Australian Journal of Advanced Nursing, 1992) and Queen Elizabeth graph system for urinary incontinence (Australian Journal on Ageing, 1995). John’s special interest is the management of dementia, including the appropriate use of simple assessment tools.

Professional Reviews: