Highlights
- •Rehabilitation team members continue to exhibit poor consensus on the meanings of common cognitive terms for severity ratings and memory functions.
- •Only half of rehabilitation professionals believe there is a common understanding of cognitive terminology.
- •Even the 2 types of professionals most likely to use cognitive assessment measures (speech-language pathologists and psychologists/neuropsychologists) have significant discrepancies in how they interpret the severity of cognitive deficits.
Abstract
Objective
To examine current use of descriptive labels for levels of cognitive impairment and
types of memory to explore whether rehabilitation disciplines are now communicating
more effectively.
Design
Survey of rehabilitation professionals.
Setting
Hospital rehabilitation programs.
Participants
Respondents (N=130) representing 8 facilities in 5 states completed surveys.
Interventions
Not applicable.
Main Outcome Measures
Responses to survey questions about severity and types of memory impairment were examined
with the Kruskal-Wallis test to determine the impact of profession on ratings. Post
hoc Mann-Whitney U test comparisons of the 2 professions with the most cognitive assessment experience,
psychologists/neuropsychologists and speech-language pathologists, were conducted.
Results
Ratings of various deficit levels differed significantly by profession (mild: H=39.780, P<.000; moderate: H=43.309, P<.000; severe: H=38.354, P<.000), but not by program location. In comparing psychologists/neuropsychologists
and speech-language pathologists specifically, we found a significant discrepancy
in ratings for percentile ranges associated with the terms mild (U=103.000, P<.001), moderate (U=78.000, P<.000), and severe (U=109.000, P<.001). Disagreement on the meaning of descriptive memory terms was noted among rehabilitation
professionals in general, with large percentages of respondents not agreeing on the
meanings of terms.
Conclusions
A significant lack of consensus persists regarding the understanding of common cognitive
terminology. This miscommunication affects cognitive impairment descriptors (eg, mild,
moderate, severe) and categorization of types of memory. Only half of rehabilitation
professionals appear aware of this discrepancy, suggesting that education is necessary
to bring greater awareness of the potential for miscommunication.
Keywords
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: September 15, 2014
Footnotes
Disclosures: none.
Identification
Copyright
© 2015 American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
