Rehabilitation inpatient screening of early cognitive recovery.

A neuropsychologic bedside screening instrument has been developed for use with recovering, cognitively impaired inpatients. Its purpose is to help clarify the nature and extent of cognitive impairments and to quantify change during recovery. The Barry Rehabilitation Inpatient Screening of Cognition (BRISC) represents an extension downward into the broad range of below-normal functioning. Reliability and validity data, based on 20 head-injured inpatients, and normative data, based on 52 nonpatients are presented. These data indicate that the BRISC is an appropriate instrument for use with its target population.