Retrospective analysis of guardians' perceptions of cognitively impaired elderly

The increased number of elderly persons who will become cognitively impaired in the near future is a cause for concern to all in the health care professions. Even though the final determination of incapacity and incompetency is a legal decision, input from health care professionals is weighed heavily by courts. Health professionals can have influence at the clinical level and also at the level of influencing social policy. Nurses rely on input from the assessments of informal caregivers. This research was conducted to determine guardians' perceptions of important criteria on the Incompetency Assessment Scale. Eleven guardians, a majority of whom were daughters of the elderly wards, perceived 9 of the 22 criteria on the IAS as important or very important to the question of incompetency. All nine criteria are found in Minnesota's statutory definition of incompetency, and also appear in the first two levels of the Maslow hierarchy of needs. Further research is recommended to develop a weighting or clustering of criteria to more accurately ascertain the way that incompetency judgments are made by guardians and other caregivers.