With regard to following commands, the NIH Stroke Scale (NIHSS) assesses this level of consciousness in part 1C by asking the patient to do the following two things:
1. "Close your eyes and now open them."
2. "Make a fist and now open it."
You may repeat the command no more than twice in order to avoid the bias of coaching the patient.
It's fine to provide some prompting by performing the task yourself while asking the patient to do the same.
This component of the NIHSS is scored as follows:
0 = performs both tasks correctly. 1 = performs one task corectly. 2 = performs neither task correctly.
