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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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Nurses making a diagnosis of dementia
— a potential change in practice? | | Author(s) | S Page, K Hope, P Bee |
| Journal title | International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, vol 23, no 1, January 2008 |
| Pages | pp 27-33 |
| Source | http://www.interscience.wiley.com |
| Keywords | Dementia ; Diagnosis ; Nurses ; Geriatric out-patients clinics ; Comparison ; Evaluation ; North West England. |
| Annotation | Of 484 consecutive referrals following home-based nurse assessments to a memory clinic in North West England over an 18-month period, 175 (43.3%) were diagnosed by the multidisciplinary team (MDT) as having dementia. 73 (41.5%) were classified as Alzheimer's disease (AD), 81 (46%) of mixed sub-type, and 20 (11.4%) of vascular origin. Together, two nurses were able to detect dementia with 94% accuracy; sensitivity was 92% and specificity was 96%. The positive and negative predictive values of their judgements were 94% and 98% respectively. Nurses were able to sub-diagnose dementia with 80% accuracy. In this study, structured initial diagnosis by a specialist nurse was shown to be an accurate method of determining a diagnosis of cognitive impairment, when compared to formal MDT judgement. The principle benefit of this approach was that signposting to subsequent care pathways was expedited. Arguably, such distributed responsibility affords a viable option in the future detection of early dementia. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-080212209 A |
| Classmark | EA: LK7: QTE: L6G: 48: 4C: 82NW |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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