Investigating nurses’ knowledge and attitudes about delirium in older persons: a cross-sectional study

Abstract

Introduction Delirium is the most common emergency for older hospitalized patients that demands urgent treatment, otherwise it can lead to more severe health conditions. Nurses play a crucial part in diagnosing delirium and their competencies facilitate the appropriate treatment and management of the condition. Aim This study aims to enhance the understanding of delirium care by exploring both knowledge and attitudes of nurses toward patients in acute care hospital wards and the possible association between these two variables. Method The Nurses Knowledge of Delirium Questionnaire (NKD) and the Attitude Tool of Delirium (ATOD) that were created for the said inquiry, were disseminated to 835 nurses in the four largest Public Hospitals of the Republic. These tools focused particularly on departments with increased frequency of delirium (response rate = 67%). Results Overall nurses have limited knowledge of acute confusion/delirium. The average of correct answers was 42.2%. Only 38% of the participants reported a correct definition of delirium, 41.6 correctly reported the tools to identify delirium and 42.5 answered correctly on the factors leading to delirium development. The results of the attitudes’ questionnaire confirmed that attitudes towards patients with delirium may not be supportive enough. A correlation between the level of nurses’ knowledge and their attitude was also found. The main factors influencing the level of knowledge and attitudes were gender, education, and workplace. Conclusion The findings of this study are useful for the international audience since they can be used to develop and modify educational programmes in order to rectify the knowledge deficits and uninformed attitudes towards patients with delirium. The development of a valid and reliable instrument for the evaluation of attitudes will help to further assess nurses’ attitudes. Furthermore, the results are even more important and useful on a national level since there is no prior data on the subject area, making this study the first of its kind.

Assessment of level of knowledge, attitude, and associated factors toward delirium among health professionals working in intensive care unit multicenter, cross-sectional study, Amhara region comprehensive specialized hospitals, Northwest Ethiopia, 2023

“…Those with a negative or neutral attitude toward delirium were less likely to have good knowledge about delirium than those with a positive attitude. These findings are supported by previous studies ( 29 , 39 ). In line with this study, an earlier study reported that better knowledge was correlated with a positive attitude toward delirium ( 39 ).…”

“…These findings are supported by previous studies ( 29 , 39 ). In line with this study, an earlier study reported that better knowledge was correlated with a positive attitude toward delirium ( 39 ). Health professionals who believed that the delirium screening tool would change delirium care were more likely to have a positive attitude as compared to those who did not, which is consistent with previous studies ( 9 ).…”

Delirium Diagnosis, Complication Recognition, and Treatment Knowledge among Nurses in an Italian Local Hospital: A Cross-Sectional Study

“…Overall, the knowledge level was found to be inadequately aligned with the increasing clinical impact of delirium on healthcare services [ 5 , 15 ]. Similar levels of poor delirium knowledge have been reported in previous studies in China and the Netherlands [ 14 , 16 ].…”

“…For example, a study in the USA revealed low recognition rates for different subtypes of delirium among licensed nurses and nursing assistants [ 26 ]. Similarly, a study by Papaioannou et al found that nurses in departments with a higher incidence of delirium often answered delirium-oriented questions incorrectly [ 14 ].…”

“…The nursing staff employed across various hospital departments, including internal medicine, acute care, postsurgical, emergency, and palliative care, is increasingly recognizing the need for specific and updated training concerning delirium. This awareness has sparked interest in the international literature with the aim of assessing the current level of knowledge about delirium among nursing personnel before contemplating potential interventions [ 13 , 14 ].…”