Preliminary Study of the Utility of the Menu Task in an Acute Care Setting.

Objective: To establish the preliminary clinical utility and ecological validity in an acute care setting of a brief functional cognitive screening measure, the Menu Task (MT).

Design: Cross-sectional observational study.

Setting: Single university-affiliated acute care hospital.

Participants: A convenience sample of consecutive general medical patients (N=104) referred to occupational therapy who were not identified as having dementia or delirium and who provided consent.

Interventions: Not applicable.

Main Outcome Measures: MT, Mini-Cog, Activity Measure for Postacute Care (AM-PAC) 6-clicks.

Results: The mean age of participants was 70.75 years, and the mean length of stay was 10.17 days. The MT was not significantly correlated with age (=-.15), education in years (=.09), the number of chronic health conditions (=-.18), or length of stay (=.00). The MT was minimally and not significantly correlated with the AM-PAC Basic Mobility (=-.06) and Daily Activity (=-.17) scores. The MT identified more patients as impaired than the Mini-Cog (Χ =19.69, =1, N=104; <.0001). The MT mean scores increased in parallel with increasing scores in the Mini-Cog (F=5.75; =4.99; <.0001: ꞃ=0.19).

Conclusions: The mean duration of the MT assessment suggests that routine administration by occupational therapists in an acute care setting is feasible and can add information distinct from the basic mobility and self-care data provided by the AM-PAC measures. This study provides preliminary evidence that the MT is sensitive to functional cognitive deficits in an acutely hospitalized population; however, further research is needed to establish the relationship between the MT and postdischarge independent living skills.