Telephone and in-person proxy agreement between stroke patients and caregivers for the functional independence measure

This study examined patient/proxy agreement for telephone administration of the Functional Independence Measure (FIM) to a sample of 25 community-living stroke patients 18 mo post-stroke and their caregivers. Patients had all received in-patient rehabilitation for stroke. Because use of the FIM is increasing for follow-up purposes, it is important to document whether it is appropriate to administer a telephone version to proxy caregivers in situations in which patients cannot answer for themselves. Proxy agreement results were then compared with those obtained for in-person administration of the FIM to the same sample 1 yr earlier. Overall, proxy agreement for telephone administration was excellent for total scores (intraclass correlation was 0.91) and the physical dimension (0.94) and lower for the cognitive dimension (0.52), closely paralleling results obtained for the earlier in-person administration. Reasons for lower agreement on the cognitive dimension are discussed.