14 March 2018 is World Delirium Awareness Day / Wereld Delirium Dag

Why do we need WDAD?
Delirium is a frequent complication and requires preventive measures as well as immediate and adequate treatment. Although numerous studies have documented the clinical and economical consequences of Postoperative Delirium (POD), systematic interventions aimed to reduce its incidence and duration are rarely implemented. Currently care is not sufficiently focussed on the patient’s safety with the aim of reducing long-term harms such as cognitive dysfunction and posttraumatic stress disorder, which can impair quality of life. Despite huge costs of POD and its preventability, it receives little attention in terms of resource allocation from hospital administrators and healthcare institutional governance representatives. To date, no nation-based strategies have been applied in Europe to minimise POD or monitor its incidence. However, process control has become a key issue for success in many healthcare organisations. (Conclusion from the “Evidence and consensus-based guideline on Postoperative Delirium”, by the European society of Anaesthesiology, 2017).