The Delirium Aware Safer Healthcare (DASH) campaign is a multi-year quality improvement campaign that will build towards reducing hospital-acquired delirium across Ontario. Year 1 will focus on 3 specific change ideas:
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Cautiously prescribing medications that increase delirium risk (e.g., sedative hypnotics [for sleep] and/or opioids [for post-surgical pain])
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Optimizing sleep environment
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Promoting discussion of delirium in huddles
The campaign will build, adding additional delirium interventions in future years.
Why focus on delirium
Delirium is one of the leading causes of preventable hospital harms in Ontario. Delirium impacts patient and provider safety, access and flow, and alternate level of care days. Delirium is associated with increased mortality and those affected by it have hospital visits prolonged an average 8 days, resulting in additional $11,000 per hospital stay.
What can you do
In April 2024, Ontario Health will launch a learning community that will offer all participants the opportunity to learn from their peers and from experts across the province via virtual ‘live’ touchpoints. People will be able to connect with their peers on an online discussion forum and in virtual drop-in sessions. They will have the opportunity to develop peer-mentoring relationships focused on reducing hospital-acquired delirium.
Who can participate
Any hospital that is interested in reducing or is already working on reducing hospital-acquired delirium is welcome to participate.
Getting started
You can start right now by:
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Create your Quorum account.
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Visit the DASH CoP and click the JOIN GROUP button.
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Don’t forget to click on the “Subscribe to Updates” button once you have been accepted into the group.
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Email ClinicalQuality@OntarioHealth.ca to express your interest in participating in the campaign.
Resources
The eReport is an online tool for hospitals. It allows you to access indicators that help enable quality improvement. The report is dynamic, and you can view data at the hospital and regional levels. You will need a ONE ID account to access the data.