Aggressive Behaviour Risk Assessment Tool for newly admitted residents of long-term care homes.

AIM

The aim of this study was to revise the 10-item Aggressive Behaviour Risk Assessment Tool for predicting aggressive events among residents newly admitted to long-term care homes.

BACKGROUND

The original tool had acceptable sensitivity and specificity for identifying potentially aggressive patients in acute care medical-surgical units, but its usefulness in long-term care homes is unknown.

DESIGN

A retrospective cohort study design was used.

METHODS

All residents admitted to 25 long-term care homes in western Canada were assessed for the risk of aggression using the original tool within 24 hours of admission from January 2014 - December 2014 (n = 724). Incident reports of aggressive events occurring within 30 days of admission were collected. Multiple logistic regression and receiver operating characteristics analyses were performed.

RESULTS

Fifty-three residents of 724 exhibited aggressive behaviours. The demographic variable of age less than 85 years was found to be a positive predictor of aggressive events in multivariate logistic regression model and was added to the tool. The revised six-item Aggressive Behaviour Risk Assessment Tool for Long-Term Care consists of one new item, age less than 85 years and five items from the original tool: History of physical aggression, physically aggressive/threatening, anxiety, confusion/cognitive impairment and threatening to leave. The receiver operating characteristics of the revised tool with weighted scoring showed a good discriminant ability with satisfactory sensitivity and specificity at the recommended cut-off score of 4.

CONCLUSION

The revised six-item tool may be useful in identifying potentially aggressive residents newly admitted to long-term care homes.