Delirium has long-term consequences for intensive care unit patients. The project site, an urban academic hospital, did not previously use a validated delirium screening tool, and patients commonly received sedative medications to treat agitation.
To minimize the risk of delirium by implementing the Confusion Assessment Method for the Intensive Care Unit (CAM-ICU) as the standard-of-care delirium assessment tool in the intensive care unit and by decreasing use of high-risk medications (ie, opioids and benzodiazepines).
An observational pretest-posttest design was used to analyze deidentified patient data from electronic health records. The evidence-based practice intervention focused on educating nurses on high-risk medications and CAM-ICU implementation. Control charts, χ2 tests, and mixed regression models were used to evaluate the effectiveness of the intervention in reducing delirium risk by decreasing use of high-risk medications.
High-risk medication use significantly decreased after intervention among patients at low risk for delirium (before intervention, 7.37%; after intervention, 3.92%; P < .001) and at high risk for delirium (before intervention, 4.73%; after intervention, 2.99%; P < .001). Hospital stays were significantly shorter in patients at low risk than at high risk for delirium (P < .001) but increased by a mean of 0.13 days with each additional high-risk medication used (P < .001).
The variation of high-risk medication use was significantly controlled with the implementation of CAM-ICU and education. Nurses felt that hands-on training with the CAM-ICU increased their comfort in identifying patients at risk for delirium. Future work will focus on assessment accuracy.
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