Postgraduate medical journal
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Multicenter Study Comparative Study
Emergency physician recognition of delirium.
To compare the recognition of delirium by emergency physicians based on observations made during routine clinical care with concurrent ratings made by a trained researcher after formal cognitive assessment and to examine each of the four individual features of delirium separately to determine the variation in identification across features. ⋯ When emergency physicians use routine clinical observations, they may miss diagnosing up to two-thirds of patients with delirium. Recognition of delirium can be enhanced with standardised cognitive testing.