Aged Care Assessment Tools

Palliative Care NSW would like to acknowledge the work done by the following organisations in creating or providing access to palliative care resources for Aged Care communities within Australia: PCOC, ELDAC, PalliAged and CareSearch.

Below are some suggested tools that may be used within the aged care sector to assess symptoms.

Multiple Symptoms

The Symptom Assessment Scale (SAS) rates the severity of a person’s symptoms (0-10 scale). When a person has multiple symptoms at the same time, you can identify the highest scoring symptom to begin a more thorough assessment and treatment plan discussion.

This form is also available in many translations from PCOC

 

Pain Tools

Abbey Pain Scale – this tool can be used when a person is unable to communicate their pain. A health professional observes the person and scores against the listed criteria.

Numeric Rating Scale -this tool provides a severity rating of the pain which can be used for the initial assessment and ongoing to determine the response to treatment.

The Wong-Baker FACES Pain Rating Scale– uses a combination of faces, numbers and words to help a person effectively communicate the severity of their physical pain.

Functional Abilities

Australian-modified Karnofsky Performance Status (AKPS)– uses a scale of 0 to 100 rank the functional performance status. A score of 40 of below is one of the eligibility criteria for new Support at Home Pathways.  

Barthel Index– is a tool that assesses the performance of 10 activities of daily living.

Distress

The NCCN Distress Thermometer– incorporates physical, emotional, social, spiritual and practical items which the person rates 0 – 10.

Breathlessness

The Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) is useful for people who can self report their symptom.

Modified Borg Scale (mBorg) is used for people who have difficulty with numerical rating scales.

Depression

Geriatric Depression Scale (short form) is a tool designed to screen and measure depression in older adults. There are 15 questions, and it takes approximately 5 – 10 minutes to complete.

K10 (Kessler 10) – is screening instrument to identify people in need of further assessment for anxiety and depression.