Nurses' experiences of delirium and how to identify delirium - A qualitative study

Abstract

Aim: Delirium is a serious, acute medical condition which places a heavy burden on the patient, his or her family and healthcare professionals. There have been only a limited number of studies to explore nurses' experiences of delirium and how delirium is identified in community care. The research questions of the study are as follows: “How do community care nurses' experience delirium?” and “How is delirium identified?”. Design: This study has been designed as an explorative and descriptive study. Methods: A topic-based interview guide was developed containing questions associated with the Registered Nurses' experiences of their meetings with people with delirium and their identification of delirium. Results: Nurses working in the community care need to know more about delirium as they play a key role in treatment. Our results also show that the participants have difficulty in establishing whether a patient is suffering from acute confusion/delirium, depression or dementia.