National Audit of Dementia – new report
The College’s National Audit of Dementia published its sixth national ‘Care in General Hospitals‘ report last week (12 December).
The audit has seen significant increases in screening for delirium and assessment for pain for people living with dementia who are admitted to a general hospital.
Hospitals continue to struggle to identify all people who are living with dementia when they are admitted as inpatients. This has been identified as a continuing area for improvement as it is highly important in planning personalised care and resource allocation.
Recommendations in the report focus on:
- the use of personal information documents which collate important information about preferences and needs, to improve communication and quality of care
- the need for structured assessments to be used routinely
- the importance of ensuring that audit metrics are included in quality assurance reporting.
Although there have been improvements since the last round of audit, wide variation between hospitals can be seen in results for assessments, and in the scores for overall quality of care and communication given by carers for people with dementia.
Seeking clinical leads to work on the audit
We also have a job vacancy for two clinical leads for the National Audit of Dementia.