Correct AIMS Assessment Procedure

[digitalgirl]

If I were to say I conduct AIMS assessments by observing the patients daily, instead of conducting the full assessment, is this enough?

As a student, it is my understanding that the AIMS assessment needs to be carried out as specified in the instructions in order to accurately asses for early signs of tardive dyskinesia. I observed something troubling recently and want to be sure I am not overreacting or creating an issue that doesn't exist.

At an inpatient psychiatric hospital, multiple AIMS forms (for different patients) were filled out, signed, and filed without the actual assessment having been carried out. The reasoning provided to me was that observing the patients daily is sufficient to detect signs of EPS and that actually conducting the assessment can cause anxiety, which can lead to movements that affect the AIMS score.

I know that real world nursing varies greatly from what we are taught in school about how something should be done, so I wanted to reach out to the experts. The reasoning seems legitimate, but I do not have enough experience to know if it is.

[vintagemother, BSN, CNA, LVN, RN]

You will see many assessments performed on the fly in the real world. Good nurses assess their pts all the time without the pt even knowing they're being assessed.

Sometimes, nurses do 1 part of an assessment at one time, like while with the pt during med pass, and do another part of the assessment while observing the milieu.

Please don't assume a nurse didn't do something just because you didn't see it. My school teaches us nurses to be critical of other nurses in this manner and I don't feel it's conducive to good working relationships to worry about what other nurses are doing (unless we're talking about harming a pt)

As for me, I feel I was very fortunate in my last psychiatric nursing position that I was tasked with completing AIMS assessments without also being burdened with med pass. I did formally assess each pt 1:1, but I had the time to do this because of the great way our tasks were split up amongst staff.