Consensus-based recommendations and proposals for improving the management of elderly emergency patients with suspected infection in the Spanish autonomous community of Valencia: the PIPA project

Objective.

To develop expert consensus-based recommendations and proposals on how to improve the care of elderly emergency patients with suspected infection in the autonomous community of Valencia.

Methods.

This project was carried out in 3 phases: 1) design of a questionnaire by means of consensus among a group of experts; 2) online survey to determine the opinions of emergency physicians in the community of Valencia; and 3) drafting of expert consensus-based recommendations and proposals arising from the results of the survey. The

experts used the Delphi method to reach consensus and the survey was posted online.

Results.

After 2 rounds of voting, 21 emergency medicine experts reached consensus on 15 of the 30 survey items initially proposed: 4 items (26.6%) referred to patient classification and placement, 5 (33.3%) to diagnosis, and 6 (40.0%)

to treatment. The resulting online questionnaire was returned by 142 (77.2%) of the 184 emergency physicians belonging to 21 hospital emergency departments in the community of Valencia. The experts reached a high level of consensus (mean score, > 7) on 11 (73.3%) of the 15 recommendations posed by the group’s coordinator after the survey.

Conclusions.

The experts were able to propose 11 consensus-based recommendations and proposals for improving the care of elderly patients with suspected infection in emergency departments in Valencia.