The reliability and validity of the Care Planning Assessment Tool.
OBJECTIVE
The development of a simple, comprehensive, valid and reliable tool to assist aged care services staff develops and monitors care plans.


METHOD
An assessment with proven utility in a psychogeriatric setting was modified to improve its relevance to aged care services. Reliability was assessed from the scores obtained from two independent raters assessing 48 randomly selected residents in a large aged care facility. Validity was assessed by comparison with well-validated measures of cognition and function.


RESULTS
The Care Planning Assessment Tool has very high interrater reliability and good internal consistency. The validity of the subscales compared with well-validated assessments was very high.


CONCLUSION
The psychometric properties of the Care Planning Assessment Tool are sufficiently good to allow it to be used with confidence in the care planning process. This is supported by a similar evaluation carried out on the Japanese version.