Abstract
Purpose: Apathy is one kind of frontal lobe dysfunction, and patients who suffer from apathy tend to be misdiagnosed as being “lazy” by medical staff and families. Recently, apathy-measuring scales have been developed, such as the “Clinical Assessment for Spontaneity (CAS)” to try to evaluate this disability as objectively as possible. CAS consisted of five subscales to measure multiple viewpoints of apathy. In this study we used the CAS3, the scale for assessment of spontaneity about patients’ ADL. The purpose of this study was to investigate the characteristics of evaluation between families and nurses in assessing patients’ apathy.
Method: Thirty-nine pairs of families and nurses were interviewed and evaluated concerning patients’ apathy using the CAS3 scale.
Results: A significant correlation was observed between the total CAS scores of families and nurses. However, the subscale CAS3 scores for specific categories, especially “grooming,” “bathing,” “medication,” “greeting,” “communication with others,” and “hobbies” did not correlate significantly.
Conclusion: When the results of CAS3 were analyzed, the total score of CAS was correlated, but there were evaluation gaps between nurses and families for some items because of the difference of observation opportunities. These results suggest that if families participate in patients’ assessment, nurses can evaluate apathy in more detail based on information about patients’ characteristics and lifestyles before a stroke occurs.
