Tooling nurses to assess complexity in routine home care practice: Derivation of a complexity index from the interRAI‐HC

Abstract

Abstract Aim Home care nurses often use the Resident Assessment Instrument‐Home Care (interRAI‐HC) to assess health needs. However, this tool does not assess complexity. This study proposes to derive a complexity index (CI) from the interRAI‐HC using the operational definition of the dedicated COMID checklist (COmplexité Multidimensionnelle des prises en soins Infirmières à Domicile). Design Data were collected at the baseline assessment of the fraXity study (N = 231, aged ≥ 65), which relied on an observational longitudinal design. Methods Measures were the interRAI‐HC, from which the CI binary variables were computed and the COMID, used as a reference. Results Twenty‐six CI variables were computed from the interRAI‐HC, and all but three correlations were significant. The correlation between the CI score and the COMID score was ρ = 0.730 (p < .001). Conclusions The study demonstrates that complexity can be assessed directly from the interRAI‐HC by deriving a CI.

Keywords

• assessment
• complexity
• home care
• interRAI‐HC
• nurses
• nursing