Reports of neuropsychiatric symptoms of older care recipients by their family members and their foreign home care workers: results from triadic data.

OBJECTIVES

To evaluate reports of neuropsychiatric symptoms (NPS) per family members and round the clock foreign home care workers.

DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS: A cross-sectional matched sample of family members, foreign home care workers, and care recipients.

MEASUREMENTS

Family members and foreign home care workers completed a measure of NPS. All 3 stakeholders provided a variety of demographic and clinical characteristics.

RESULTS

There was a low agreement between family members and foreign home care workers with regard to reports of depression and disturbing behaviors in care recipient and a good agreement with regard to reports of memory problems. In addition to care recipients' characteristics, family members' characteristics were primarily correlated with family members' reports of NPS and foreign home care workers' characteristics were primarily associated with foreign home care workers' reports of NPS.

CONCLUSIONS

Because much of the evaluation of NPS relies on reports of formal (ie, paid) and informal caregivers (ie, unpaid), clinicians should be aware of the fact that these reports are based in large part on the subjective perception of the caregiver.