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Predictors of Agitation in Nursing Home Residents

¹ Center for Research in Applied Gerontology
³ Department of Biostatistics
⁴ Center for Aging, University of Alabama at Birmingham.
² Center for Mental Health and Aging, The University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa.
⁵ School of Nursing, University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Address correspondence to Louis Burgio, Center for Mental Health and Aging, Box 870315, The University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35487 or to David Vance, Center for Research in Applied Gerontology, HMB100, Birmingham, Alabama 35294. E-mail: lburgio{at}sw.ua.edu or [email protected]

Agitation in nursing home residents presents a serious challenge to caregivers and may place residents at risk for harm. Understanding the etiology of agitation can assist clinicians in developing nonpharmacologic interventions for preventing and treating this problem. The purpose of this study was to examine independent and common predictors of resident agitation with structural equation modeling. Agitation was measured with both a standardized staff report rating scale and direct behavioral observation. No indirect or mediating effects were found. Cognitive impairment, vision and hearing impairment, and gender were found to be independent predictors of agitation as measured by direct behavioral observation. Only cognitive impairment was found to be predictive of agitation as measured by the standardized staff report scale. An unexpected finding was that vision impairment appeared to exert a protective effect for agitation in these severely cognitively impaired residents. The clinical implications of these findings are discussed as well as the relative merits of the two methods of measuring agitation.

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				R. S. Allen, L. D. Burgio, S. E. Fisher, J. Michael Hardin, and J. L. Shuster Jr., Behavioral Characteristics of Agitated Nursing Home Residents With Dementia at the End of Life Gerontologist, October 1, 2005; 45(5): 661 - 666. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]