Neuropsychological performance labels: Do patients understand?

Area of Science:

• Neuropsychology
• Medical Communication
• Health Literacy

Background:

• Standardized descriptive labels are crucial for communicating neuropsychological performance.
• The American Academy of Clinical Neuropsychology (AACN) developed a uniform label system.
• Understanding of these AACN labels by patients, families, and providers remains unclear.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate patient, family member, and medical provider comprehension of neuropsychological performance labels.
• To compare understanding between the AACN uniform label system and a patient-centered language (PCL) system.

Main Methods:

• A pilot prospective cohort study involving 62 patients, 31 family members, and 34 referral sources.
• Participants completed a 13-question survey assessing knowledge of AACN and PCL label systems.
• The survey evaluated label knowledge, associated percentiles, and relative relationships between labels.

Main Results:

• Patients and families demonstrated significantly higher accuracy with PCL labels (54.8% and 51.6%) versus AACN labels (32.2% and 35.5%).
• Providers and patients were more accurate in ranking labels using PCL compared to AACN.
• Participants better identified absolute highest/lowest scores with AACN labels, but relative differences with PCL terminology.

Conclusions:

• Current and alternative neuropsychological score labels may not be fully understood by report recipients.
• Findings indicate a need to explore patient-centered language further to enhance the clarity of neuropsychological score communication.