Introduction to the Patient Competency Rating Scale

The Patient Competency Rating Scale (PCRS) was developed in the 1980s by George Prigatano, Ph.D. and colleagues at Presbyterian Hospital's Neuropsychological Rehabilitation Program (Prigatano and Others, 1986). The primary purpose of the PCRS is to evaluate self-awareness (the ability to appraise one's current strengths and weaknesses) following traumatic brain injury. The PCRS is a 30-item self-report instrument which asks the subject to use a 5-point Likert scale to rate his or her degree of difficulty in a variety of tasks and functions. The subject's responses are compared to those of a significant other (a relative or therapist) who rates the subject on the identical items. Impaired self-awareness may be inferred from discrepancies between the two ratings, such that the subject overestimates his/ her abilities compared to the other informant. Awareness of deficit may also be examined separately for the various domains sampled by PCRS items. These include activities of daily living, behavioral and emotional function, cognitive abilities, and physical function.

Information regarding the PCRS was contributed by Santa Clara Valley Medical Center. Please contact Stephanie Kolakowsky-Hayner, Ph.D., at for more information.

If you find the information in the COMBI useful, please mention it when citing sources of information. The information on the PCRS may be cited as:

Kolakowsky-Hayner, S. (2010). The Patient Competency Rating Scale. The Center for Outcome Measurement in Brain Injury. http://www.tbims.org/combi/pcrs ( accessed ).