Good morning and welcome to Declared 2021. My name is Gideon Caplan and I'm the President
of the Australasian Delirium Association, and it's my great pleasure to welcome you
and to salute the great work of our previous two speakers who have chaired the conference committee,
and they've done an amazing job in the most trying and difficult of circumstances to roll out this
incredible conference. Alison and Andy really they've gone above and beyond with their amazing
committee and they've really pulled together this conference when they've been confronted by
disaster after disaster in the current COVID pandemic, so this is really one for the record
books that they've done so well to have so many registrants and such an amazing conference, so I
really want to congratulate the whole conference organising committee and the amazing two chairs.
I'd also like to
acknowledge the country that we're meeting on, wherever you are around Australia, and
acknowledge the traditional owners of the land. I am currently on the land of
the Gadigal people of the Eora nation and whichever people's land you are on, I want you
to acknowledge them and I would like to pay my respects to elders past and present and future,
which is very important and leads me on to the next very important task that I
have to perform this morning, which is to launch the Delirium Clinical Care Standard,
and this is really another landmark in the history of delirium management in Australia.
Many of you will remember that the 2016 conference we launched the previous, the first edition of the
Delirium Clinical Care Standard and so it's a real honour to be able to launch the second
edition and unfortunately because of the way the colour works it's very hard to see that but the
second edition of the Standards which really have made an incredible difference to the way delirium
is recognised, diagnosed and managed all around Australia. I'm very pleased and honoured that the
Commission has invited me to launch the revised Delirium Clinical Care Standard at Declared 2021.
The Standard aims to improve the prevention of delirium in patients at risk, improve the diagnosis
and treatment of patients with delirium so that incident severity and duration of delirium are
reduced. I don't know about you but I've already noticed a great response to the first edition
of the Standards that people are really taking delirium much more seriously across my hospital,
and across the whole of Australia. And if you look at the results, and this is not just my impression,
but the Commission has done a survey which shows that since the first edition was launched,
85 percent of survey respondents have made changes at their organisation
to the practice in order to implement the Delirium Clinical Care Standards,
this suggests there is a great will to change how patients with or at risk of delirium are cared for.
Some of those who haven't made changes felt there wasn't a need but you can see
the vast majority of people are really taking the Standards up and running with them. This is of 217,
of the 217 you can see on the right there whose organisation had made changes because
of the Clinical Care Standards, 92 percent reported that this had improved the quality of care,
which is a an enormous benefit, an enormous tribute to these Standards, and the Standards
are a great tool to drive change by introducing delirium screening assessment and management tools
education and training to clinicians and consumers, developing or revising hospital,
local health district based guidelines, protocols and policies on delirium management, as well as
auditing and monitoring clinical performance, and providing access to new resources. And I'm sure you
will agree that these are important changes. The revised Standard includes strengthed statements
for some existing quality statements particularly statement 6 about preventing complications of care,
and quality statement 7 about avoiding the use of antipsychotic medicine,
which is really not recommended for a patient with delirium. And there's also a new statement,
quality statement three, about patient-centered information and support regarding information
and support to reduce the distress and severity of symptoms of delirium.
The Delirium Clinical Care Standard is in the Comprehensive Care Standard under 5.29 and 5.30,
and in the 636 assessments for hospital accreditation that have been carried out
between January 2019 and July of 2021, it was found that 72 percent
of institutions met the requirements for action 5.29, and 73 percent met the requirements for action
5.30, which as I said shows an enormous take up of the standards which is amazing, and 85 percent
met the requirements for action 8.05 which is Recognising Acute Deterioration.
So organisations are putting processes in place to improve the care for delirium and to meet
the requirements for accreditation, they can use the revised Standards to improve these actions.
The Commission has a national role in leading improvements in health care,
safety and quality and improving the appropriateness of care is a big part of
this role. I want to acknowledge with thanks all of those who contributed to the review of the
Clinical Care Standards, I would like you, I would like all health clinicians and services across
Australia, to consider what the standard means to you, and what you can do to improve delirium care,
and you've got some great resources which you can see illustrated on the screen here.
These resources are now available on the Commission website.
And so it is with great pleasure that I officially launched the 2021 Delirium Clinical Care Standard
Now Sue Kurrle, and Professor Sue Kurrle and Anne Cumming, Anne Cumming as one of the leaders at the Commission
in drafting these Clinical Care Standards and getting them through, will be presenting
in more detail on the Standards tomorrow so please join them to hear more about this update.
And so thank you to the Commission, thank you to the organising committee, and thank you to all of
you for coming to join this conference. I hope you enjoy it and I hope you get a lot out of it, bye