Brief Agitation Rating Scale (BARS) for Nursing Home Patients

 

Items included in the rating scale:

(1) hitting

(2) grabbing

(3) pushing

(4) pacing or aimless wandering

(5) repetitious mannerisms

(6) restlessness

(7) screaming

(8) repetitive sentences or questions

(9) making strange noises

(10) complaining

 

Frequency of Each Behavior	Rating
none	1
once in 2 weeks	2
2 or 3 times in 2 weeks	3
once a week	4
2 or 3 times a week	5
once a day	6
several times a day	7

 

The scale was evaluated on each shift, making reports of behaviors over time periods like a week seem unnecessary. In light of the desire to keep the rating scale simple and easy to do by busy clinicians, I used a streamlined scoring system in the spreadsheet.

 

Frequency of Each Behavior	Rating
none	0
once or twice	1
occasionally	2
often or continuous	3

 

Performance:

• The Cronbach alpha for the 3 daily shifts ranged from 0.74 to 0.82.

• The intra-class correlation between rater pairs was 0.73.

• The score correlated well with a CMAI done on the patient.

 

Limitation:

• The scale needs to be cross-validated.