Family and professional caregivers' ratings of dementia symptoms and activities of daily living of day care patients: do differences change over time?

The purpose of this study was to compare ratings of patients' carried out by professional and family caregivers. These patients were attending rehabilitative geriatric and gerontopsychiatric day care centres, they were about 77 years old, 93% had dementia, and each had an average of 4.7 diseases. Eighty percent of the family caregivers were female, and 60% were children of the patients. Staff raters of the day care units were trained professionals. Data were collected at two measurement times: T1 took place during the first ten days of service use; T2 was conducted six months later. Activities of daily living (ADL) and Memory and Behaviour Problems (MBPC) were investigated. Family caregivers noted significantly more deficits on the ADL scale, and significantly more problems on the MBPC scale. These differences increased when subjective burden of the family caregiver was high. The longitudinal results showed that these differences in ADL and MBPC ratings remained remarkably stable, although there was an increase in deficit ratings in both groups.