caring for hospitalized dementia patients in Ireland

I think we all find it quite difficult to be in hospital. You're sick to begin with, there's a lot of sometimes unpleasant tests, you're sharing a room with other people, there's a lot of information to process a lot of questions. Imagine how much more difficult that is for a person with dementia. When they're not in their familiar environment, there aren't familiar people around them, and they're finding it much more difficult to process everything that's going on. And how much more anxious they might be in a hospital environment than someone who doesn't have dementia.

So in order to encourage hospital staff to change their practices, their processes and even their culture, we performed a national audit of thirty-five hospitals in Ireland, interviewing senior management, senior clinicians, ward managers and then looking at the health care records to look at the actual processes of care on the ground.

This was a partnership between UCC, TCD and the HSC and it was funded by Atlantic Philanthropies and the [? Mead ?] Foundation.

So unfortunately, but perhaps not unexpectedly, we found that the quality of dementia care in acute hospitals isn't as high as we'd like it to be. We found that the training of staff hasn't been prioritized in hospitals. No hospital had mandatory training for staff in dementia awareness.

We found that a person with dementia in an Irish hospital is twice as likely to be prescribed an anti-psychotic as a person with dementia in a UK hospital. An anti-psychotic is a very powerful medication to calm abnormal thinking but it shouldn't be used as a first line, it should be used as a last resort.

And that indicates that perhaps the staff in Irish hospitals don't feel equipped to manage a person with dementia when they are feeling anxious or when they're wandering or pacing. They don't feel equipped to manage it in a different way apart from medication.

One of the findings was that a person with dementia in a hospital wasn't being particularly assessed for their dementia, checking what their memory was like at current times, how it had deteriorated, whether they were depressed, whether they were anxious, and one of the most concerning features was that delirium wasn't being screened for.

Delirium is an acute confusion that happens when you're sick in hospital. And it has very important consequences for a person. So in total, we have 45 recommendations within the orders for how hospitals will improve their practice. But I suppose to highlight some of the key ones, we're recommending that all staff and hospitals have basic level training so that they are aware of dementia, they recognize when they're dealing with someone with dementia, so that they can change their approach.

And certain staff would have a more enhanced level of training so that they can become what we call a dementia champion and support other stuff. We are also recommending that hospitals change their environments in sometimes quite cost effective ways, to help a person with dementia to maintain their independence in hospital, using color coding and easy to read signs.

We are also strongly recommending that hospitals will introduce policies for delirium screening. Because delirium is such an important event if it happens in a person with dementia, with long term consequences for their memory and even for their survival. We're recommending that hospitals have a policy that everyone with dementia is screened for delirium on admission and then on a regular basis. And this would be in keeping with international standards in this area.

We also would recommend based on the findings that there were such inequalities in the services available in hospitals, that all hospitals would have access to key services that are vital for the assessment and the management of a person with dementia.