Healthcare quality and safety span multiple topics across the spectrum of academic and clinical disciplines. Keeping abreast of the rapidly growing body of work can be challenging. In this series, we provide succinct summaries of selected relevant studies published in the last several months. Some articles will focus on a particular theme, whereas others will highlight unique publications from high-impact medical journals.

Ann Intern Med, 9 November 2021

The clinical syndrome of delirium is highly prevalent in hospitalised patients, affecting 3%–29% of all hospitalised adults and 22%–89% of elderly patients with dementia.1 Delirium is associated with worsened mortality, long-term cognitive impairment, prolonged hospital length of stay and recovery, and patient dementia.2–6 Early detection and non-pharmacological prevention lead to decreased hospital days, falls, costs and days of delirium.5–11 Tools such as the validated Confusion Assessment Method (CAM) identify patient risk factors for delirium.12 13 However, despite advances in recognition strategies, delirium frequently evades prompt detection.6 7 Furthermore, the predictive ability of many of these tools against a gold …