Education for Recognition and Management of Delirium

Overview

Delirium is a disturbance in consciousness with reduced ability to focus, sustain, or shift attention that occurs over a short period of time and tends to fluctuate over the course of the day. 50% to 81.7% had delirium during their ICU hospitalization. Delirium is associated with increased physical restraint, ventilation use, length of ICU stay, and mortality. However, there is no established delirium care pathway in target hospital. Chen et al. (2014) demonstrated that structured assessment stations with immediate feedback may improve overall learning efficiency over an EBP workshop alone. However, no published delirium care education study has used OSCEs as an intervention for healthcare professionals. The aim is to evaluate the effects of implementing a Scenario-based education intervention, including objective structured clinical examinations (OSCEs) on delirium care among healthcare professionals. This is a knowledge translation research, builds on eight years of delirium care research in University of Wollongong, Australia. The research will be undertaken at ICUs in a medical center in northern of Taiwan. There are two phases: (1) systematic review to identify delirium screen tool, and (2) a randomized controlled trial was conducted to determine the effects of implementing a Scenario-based education intervention, including OSCE (experimental group), and on-line education only (control group) focused on recognition and management of delirium. The hypothesis is: Scenario-based education intervention, including OSCE can increase the competence and self-efficacy among healthcare professionals in delirium care.

OSCEs are an integral aspect of all levels of medical education but limited to undergraduate nursing and allied health education. OSCEs are rarely used in the workplace as learning activities with nursing and allied health clinicians. This is the reason why this education initiative was innovative. OSCEs are simulated 'real life' clinical scenarios presented to clinicians who are required to demonstrate to an assessor the clinical tasks which form an OSCE scenario.