Dementia and Delirium Support Team in acute hospital settings

Abstract

Many issues need to be solved for acute hospitals to provide appropriate treatment and care for inpatients with dementia who have admitted to the hospital due to physical complications. The problems are aggravated by lack of knowledge and skills of staff, and further more lack of experienced advisors to the staff. Facing these issues, we launched the “Dementia & Delirium Support Team : D²ST” in August 2011 with the purpose to improve skills and knowledge to provide optimal care for inpatients with dementia. The mission of the team was to provide support and advice to the staff in charge of the inpatients with dementia and delirium to increase treatment effects. The D²ST has been well established in our hospital, and the team accepted around 140 consultation every year. The interventions based on support and advice by the team have worked well in reducing root troubles and symptoms of screaming and agitation, whereas the issues remained for amelioration of eating disorders including anorexia.

Following the achievement of our hospital, we have supported the launch of the teams modeled after D²ST in the 3 acute hospitals with more than 500 beds in Aich Prefecture in 2014. In the 3 hospitals under the leadership of the hospital executives, the support teams were launched and they prepared the operational manuals, and in the 2 hospitals among them, the teams have commenced the rounds in some wards of the hospitals. These 3 cases have revealed that D²ST in our hospital is an effective model to ameliorate treatment and care for the inpatients with dementia and delirium, and the model can be well implemented in other hospitals.