Improving the identification of patients with delirium using the 4AT assessment
- Resource Type
- Authors
- Amelia Bearn; Jennie Kusznir; William Lea
- Source
- Nursing older people. 30(7)
- Subject
- Male
Quality management
Nursing Diagnosis
Health Services for the Aged
behavioral disciplines and activities
03 medical and health sciences
0302 clinical medicine
Geriatric Nursing
Surveys and Questionnaires
mental disorders
Health care
Medicine
Humans
030212 general & internal medicine
Aged
030214 geriatrics
business.industry
Decision Trees
Delirium
medicine.disease
Mental health
Project team
Quality Improvement
nervous system diseases
Identification (information)
Neuropsychiatric disorder
Female
Medical emergency
medicine.symptom
Older people
business
Gerontology
- Language
- ISSN
- 1472-0795
Delirium is a common neuropsychiatric disorder that all those working with older people will have encountered at some stage. Delirium is often poorly identified in hospital settings and therefore not optimally managed. After data collection on the acute medical unit in an acute hospital trust in the UK it was evident that patients with signs of delirium were not being formally assessed and therefore not appropriately managed in many cases. A quality improvement project introduced the 4AT delirium assessment tool to try to ensure that patients with delirium were being identified. The project team carried out several plan-do-studyact cycles to bring about our changes, which included a 4AT assessment sticker for nursing staff to complete and teaching for all healthcare staff. Through involvement of all members of the multidisciplinary team and ongoing feedback and changes we were able to increase assessment of delirium from 0% to 64%. There is ongoing work to be done to continue to improve delirium management, but by initially improving the assessment and identification of delirium we will make a difference to these patients' outcomes.