To mark World Delirium Awareness Day, Wednesday 15th March, and continue raising awareness about the signs of delirium, we're signposting residents to our delirium advice leaflet which we've made accessible to even more people in the community by translating the information into a further six languages.
March 15th is World Delirium Awareness Day #WDAD2023. The focus for this year’s World Delirium Awareness Day is ‘Delirium is Everybody’s Business’.
The aim of World Delirium Awareness Day is to raise awareness and highlight this often under-recognised but potentially preventable condition.
Delirium causes a short-term confused state and can develop over hours or days. It is a common condition, which can affect memory, concentration and personality and is a sign of an underlying illness. Delirium will usually improve, once the underlying illness is treated, but sometimes it can last for a while.
20% of adults in hospital experience delirium, although it can develop anywhere such as at home or in a care home, and predominately affects older people.
We produced a delirium leaflet in 2021 which contains information on how to spot delirium and how to manage it. This is part of our Community Delirium Toolkit. In order to break down the language barriers which can often affect those whose first language is not English when accessing health care, we then translated the leaflet into 10 different languages (Arabic, Bangla, Farsi, Gujarati, Hindi, Kurdish, Pashto, Punjabi, Turkish and Urdu) to serve our diverse communities.
I have seen first-hand the positive benefit of having the delirium leaflet translated into different languages has had for our local Asian communities. Feedback from the community has all been positive. Many residents shared that delirium was not a condition they had heard of previously and that the leaflets had helped raise awareness as well as given advice and support on how to deal with the illness and its symptoms. Abdul Shakoor, Tameside, Oldham and Glossop Mind.
The delirium leaflets have been invaluable when discussing and explaining delirium with patients and their families or carers. The translated resources are excellent; we have an extremely diverse community who benefit from them. Caroline Harvey, a community matron for the Trafford Local Enhanced Care Organisation
Following on from the success of the original translations we’ve now translated the leaflet into a further six languages (Bengali, Cantonese, French, Polish, Somalian and Ukrainian). As well as making the leaflet available in written format, we’ve also produced an audio and visual format for each language, making them even more accessible. You can download the leaflets, films and audios here
Language shouldn’t be a barrier for anyone trying to access health care. The translation of our delirium information and advice leaflet into such a large number of languages, is an important and positive step in ensuring that this information is now more easily accessible. As well as translating the leaflets, we have made sure that they use easy-to-understand language and are culturally appropriate, an important element in making sure that everyone can engage with the information. Delirium is common, so it’s important that we raise awareness about how to spot the signs in the ones they care for or family members so that they can seek medical advice as soon as possible and reduce the number of people needing hospitalisation. Having information in range of formats and languages helps us do this. Warren Heppolette, chief officer for strategy and innovation, at Greater Manchester NHS
You can find out more about our delirium programme here
Raising awareness about delirium is important in order to ensure that the person at risk or the person who goes on to develop delirium, gets the right care and treatment.
The World Delirium Awareness Day team have created a useful website where you can find a wide range of resources on delirium for patients and carers and healthcare practitioners. You can also view a range of patient and carer videos. Find out more
We’ve collated resources to enable you to support people at risk of developing delirium and people who go on to develop delirium, including supporting family care partners and carers.
Delirium – Raising awareness resources for support staff and family, carers
