About the project
Title: Improving the detection, assessment, management, and prevention of delirium in Specialist Palliative Care Units
Funder: Yorkshire Cancer Research through the TRANSFORM project
Time frame: 2021-2022
Contact for more details: Dr Mark Pearson (Co-Chief Investigator): mark.pearson@hyms.ac.uk), Professor Miriam Johnson (Co-Chief Investigator): miriam.johnson@hyms.ac.uk
Delirium is common in people with cancer. Good clinical care may prevent, or treat, it quickly improving survival and/or quality of life. Although good practice guidelines exist, these are not usually used in hospices, where delirium is common – and often treatable.
The uncertainties about delirium prevention and management are about implementation (how to coordinate individual, team, and organisational resources) rather than the components of care itself.
This study will address the guideline implementation challenge of how to bring together practical support (e.g. screening tools and clinical pathways) and communication between family, friends, volunteers, and health professionals in a combined intervention-implementation strategy.
We will work with public Involvement group members, staff and volunteers in three Yorkshire hospices to develop a way to get “what we know we should do” into “what we actually do” (an “implementation strategy”). This strategy could also be used in hospices country-wide and in care homes, where similar problems exist.
At three Yorkshire SPCUs, this study will:
1. Use experience-based co-design to refine an implementation strategy for guideline-adherent delirium care.
2. Conduct a realist evaluation using Normalisation Process Theory to assess the acceptability and flexibility of using the implementation strategy.
3. Conduct a feasibility study to demonstrate the potential for a future national quasi-experimental evaluation.
Study registration ISRCTN 55416525 https://www.isrctn.com/ISRCTN55416525