A COMPARISON OF PATIENT AND NURSE RATINGS OF HUMAN IMMUNODEFICIENCY VIRUS-RELATED SIGNS AND SYMPTOMS

Since management strategies are guided by the assessment of the sympto m experience agreement between patients' and nurses' perceptions of sy mptoms is central to clinical management, In this study, acquired immu ne deficiency syndrome patients' perceptions of 41 human immunodeficie ncy virus-related signs and symptoms were compared in 207 pairs of rat ings by patients (n = 207) and nurses (n = 103). Ten symptoms were rep orted 50% or more of the patients. Mean patient intensity ratings for all signs and symptoms, with the exception of anxiety, were higher tha n nurse ratings. Using patients' ratings as the gold standard, chance- corrected estimates of sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive v alue, and negative predictive value of the nurses' ratings suggested t hat nurses' ratings poorly predicted patients' symptom experiences.