‘We don’t need no education…’ Teaching about delirium in medical schools

Dr Claire Copeland is a Consultant Physician in Care of the Elderly and Stroke Medicine at Forth Valley Royal Hospital. Her paper Development of an international undergraduate curriculum for delirium using a modified Delphi process has recently been published in Age and Ageing. She tweets at @Sparklystar55

Back in 2015 a workshop at the European Delirium Association (EDA) conference was held to bring together a group of delirium experts. Its purpose? To develop a consensus agreement on a delirium curriculum for medical undergraduates.

Most of you reading this I’m sure will be familiar with delirium. It’s technically been around for centuries. However there are many working in healthcare who still do not know about it. Or if they do, they refer to it by every other name except delirium.

Why walk 500 miles when you can connect at G4JGlasgow?

Dr Claire Copeland is a Consultant Physician in Care of the Elderly and Stroke Medicine, Forth Valley Royal Hospital, Larbert. She tweets @Sparklystar55

Back in 2014 Scotland was struggling to recruit trainees with 18% of training posts remaining unfilled. While Scotland may be the most beautiful country on the planet (#fact) it’s a vast and largely rural country. This is a unique selling point in some respects however there is the perception that it’s inaccessible and doesn’t have much going on compared to the more densely populated areas of say London, Manchester etc.

There is also the challenge of attracting people into the less ‘glamorous’ specialty that is Geriatrics. This problem isn’t unique to Scotland. A fact recognised by the team behind Association for Elderly Medicine Education (AEME). The founding members of AEME – James Fisher, Mark Garside, and Kelly Hunt recognised a need for high quality education for those delivering care to this older population.