Only 26.8 percent of health care professionals reported screening for delirium on routine basis
MONDAY, Aug. 29, 2016 (HealthDay News) — Training related to delirium is inadequate for intensive care unit (ICU) health care professionals, according to a study published online Aug. 18 in the Journal of Clinical Nursing.
Abeer A. Selim, B.S.N., from Mansoura University in Egypt, and colleagues surveyed ICU professionals’ awareness and practice related to delirium in a cross-sectional survey study. A sample of 168 ICU health care professionals completed a semi-structured questionnaire.
The researchers found that among health care professionals, the mean score of delirium awareness was 64.4 ± 14.0. Delirium awareness was significantly lower when the definition of delirium was not provided, for diploma nurses versus bachelor degree nurses and physicians, for those who had not read an article related to delirium or attended any workshop/lecture related to delirium, and for those working in an ICU where less than half the patients develop delirium. Only 26.8 percent of health care professionals screened for delirium on a routine basis; in the last year, 14.3 percent reported attending workshops or lectures or reading an article related to delirium. Health care professionals did not use any tools to screen delirium, nor did they follow adopted protocols or guidelines for delirium management.
“ICU health care professionals do not have adequate training or routine screening of delirium,” the authors write. “There is an evident absence of using standardized tools or adapting protocols to monitor and manage delirium.”
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