Delirium: Recognition & Response

Course details

Delirium represents a significant healthcare problem, affecting approximately 20% of adult hospital inpatients, with higher rates in older patients. Diagnosing delirium can be challenging, with up to two-thirds being missed or misdiagnosed as other conditions, such as dementia or depression.

This course is designed to give you a better understanding of risk factors for delirium so that you can more quickly manage the condition appropriately and improve patient outcomes. In order to help you improve the detection and diagnosis of delirium, we have developed some mnemonics and acronyms to help you remember the key features and underlying causes of delirium.

Early management of delirium is essential to improving patient outcomes; by the end of this programme we hope you will start to THINK DELIRIUM, WRITE DELIRIUM and TREAT DELIRIUM!

This educational programme was developed for RCPI and the College of Physicians by a team of clinical experts all faced with treating delirium in their daily practice.

• Dr Sean Kennelly, Consultant Geriatrician
• Dr Aoibhinn Lynch, Consultant in Psychiatry of Old Age
• Dr Niamh O’Regan, Specialist Registrar in Geriatric Medicine
• Dr Aoife ní Chorcorain, Consultant Psychiatrist

The module has also been reviewed by a panel of expert peer reviewers. As a programme developed by clinicians, for clinicians, we hope this module will provide you with the knowledge and tools to improve detection and diagnosis of delirium across a range of clinical settings and that it will encourage you to screen patients who are a high risk of developing delirium.