[How do users experience the handling of the Observed Emotional Rating Scale?]

As barely any empirical data on the application of the Observed Emotion Rating Scale (OERS) on sufferers of dementia is available for German-speaking Europe, the pilot project titled "Agitation" aimed to see how those persons entering the data get along with the OERS instrument. For this purpose, 12 test persons were persuaded to carry out observations with the OERS instrument in three care centres located in the Swiss Canton of Zurich. The test persons were predominantly holders of nursing qualifications and/or experienced in caring for patients suffering from dementia. Data collection was undertaken on the basis of three focus group interviews which were evaluated via qualitative content analysis. The preliminary results gained in the focus group interviews were validated by the same people using a questionnaire. The categories were titled "Missing Clearness", "Missing Possibility to Encode", "Level of Dementia", "Estimation of Emotions", "Influencing Factors" and "User Training". These indicated that know-ledge of dementia is just as important as skilled use of OERS.