Improving Mental Status Questionnaire (MSQ) completion on admission to the Acute Surgical Receiving Unit (ASRU), Ninewells Hospital, Dundee

Delirium is common yet poorly identified in the UK. Early recognition is a key prognostic factor; delay here being associated with: increased mortality, increased morbidity, prolonged hospital stay, long term disability, and increased risk of developing dementia. Improvement in the diagnosis and management of delirium has scope to improve patient care, clinical outcomes, and ultimately an improved patient experience. As patients aged ≥75 years are at an increased risk of developing delirium, we focused the improvement project to this age group. The baseline data demonstrated that the average ≥75 year-old patient admitted to the Acute Surgical Receiving Unit (ASRU) at Ninewells Hospital had 5.4 out of 12 predisposing and precipitating risk factors for delirium; thus there was great potential for delirium to develop in these patients. During the analysis of the baseline data it became clear that we could not go ahead and implement the initial proposed improvement as the completion of the mental status questionnaire (MSQ) was inconsistent and low at 14.99%. Completion of the MSQ is vital in establishing any cognitive deficit at admission, and for providing a baseline for the continuing admission. As a consequence of this, we had to shift the main aim of the improvement project from improving the identification, diagnosis, and management of delirium, to improving the completion rate of the MSQ in our target age group. Consultations with members of the admission team were held to determine ways of improving the MSQ completion rate. It became clear that the completion of the MSQ relied on clinical staff remembering all 10 questions that constitute the test. The main intervention to facilitate improvement involved affixing a sticker with all 10 questions of the MSQ within the admissions document. The main aim was to increase the percentage of cognitive screening by the Mental State Questionnaire (MSQ) to 95% in patients aged ≥75 on admission to ASRU at Ninewells Hospital by 11th July 2013. We achieved our main aim with 100% compliance on two days. Our average compliance over six days was however 81.33%, whilst not reaching our target this is still a substantial improvement. The introduction of the sticker detailing the 10 MSQ questions within the ASRU admissions document was well received by the admissions team. It has simplified the process as members of staff do not need to rely on their memory to remember the questions, and the sticker also acts as a prompt for them to consider further cognitive screening.