The Observational Scale of Level of Arousal: A brief tool for assessing and monitoring level of arousal in patients with delirium outside the ICU

摘要

Objectives Altered level of arousal, encompassing drowsiness and hypervigilance, affects at least 10% of acutely unwell patients. Existing scales provide limited coverage of milder changes in level of arousal. We devised the Observational Scale of Level of Arousal (OSLA) to enable more detailed arousal assessment. Here, we provide a preliminary case-control study of performance of the OSLA in assessing abnormal level of arousal associated with delirium outside the ICU.