GRCS hosts workshops on managing delirium
Gippsland Regional Clinical School has hosted the first of a five-day series of workshops as part of an interprofessional program on managing delirious patients.
The workshops include medical students and nursing students and are designed to teach people from different health professions to work together to improve the care of patients.
In this case, the workshops focus on patients with delirium, using case studies and opportunities to practice on a patient actor who is simulating a delirious episode. Managing patients when they are in a state of delirium – which can often include agitated, confused and even aggressive behaviour – can be very difficult.
In years gone by such patients may have been strapped down or sedated but these often caused further issues.
The new program promotes methods such as helping patients to orient themselves by explaining where they are, offering them a phone or a clock, and attempting to de-escalate the agitation. It’s an area of health care in which professionals working together as a team have much better outcomes for the patient.
In the GRCS program, workshops run for about three hours, half in tutorial and half in simulation.
It is the first time GRCS has been involved in the workshops, which also run at Berwick and in Melbourne. The program is based on the PhD studies of Lecturer Debra Kielgaldie and developed by the Head of the School of Nursing and Midwifery Professor Wendy Cross and Director of Geriatric Medicine at Eastern Health Professor Peteris Darzins.
Bernadette Hayes is pictured with local students, playing a very convincing role as a confused and demanding elderly patient with delirium.