Dear ADS Members and Partners,
It is both humbling and exciting to write my first message as President of the American Delirium Society. My history with ADS began long before I imagined serving in this role. In 2013, I presented my first scientific poster at the 3rd Annual Meeting. ADS was still young, and I was just beginning to find my way as a researcher.
Standing beside that poster, I had one of my first real debates about delirium science—with someone who would later become an ADS President. We discussed research methods, challenged interpretations, and debated what questions needed to be answered next. Here I was, early in my career, having a substantive conversation with an expert—and my ideas were being taken seriously enough to be challenged. I was hooked.
That experience captured something I still find remarkable about ADS. Year after year, this meeting brings together world experts in delirium research and practice in a community accessible enough for genuine conversation. You can present an idea, have it challenged by someone who helped shape the field, continue the discussion over coffee, and leave thinking differently about your science or practice. Those conversations—across disciplines, professions, career stages, and perspectives—make us better. ADS became my professional home.
Thirteen years later, I left our 16th Annual Meeting in Denver with that same sense of possibility on an entirely different scale. We brought together clinicians and scientists, people with lived experience of delirium, healthcare executives, implementation leaders, and national policymakers.
One of the most powerful reminders came from hearing directly from people who have experienced delirium. As clinicians and researchers, we observe delirium. We screen for it, measure it, document it, study it, and develop interventions to prevent and manage it. But what we see is nothing compared with what a person may be experiencing inside a delirious brain. Hearing those stories reminds us that lived experience must guide the questions we ask, the outcomes we value, and the care we seek to improve.
Denver also challenged us to think about what happens after evidence is generated. Our Executive Keynote Panel considered how the CMS Age-Friendly Hospital Measure could move evidence-based delirium care into health-system priorities and gain executive-level support.
Perhaps no moment captured this opportunity more clearly than our first-ever CMS listening session. Approximately 250 ADS conference attendees helped CMS understand the current landscape of delirium practice—the successes, challenges, and variation in how delirium is identified, measured, prevented, and managed. Sitting in that room, I thought: This is what ADS is supposed to be. We had their ear.
And CMS did more than listen. They challenged ADS to help them understand what should come next: “We want ADS to tell us what to propose.” That is an extraordinary opportunity and a responsibility.
ADS has spent years building an interdisciplinary community with deep expertise in delirium science and practice. Now we can bring that collective expertise to an important national policy conversation. We are synthesizing evidence, practice patterns, and guidelines to develop recommendations for how evidence-based delirium care should be measured and monitored across healthcare.
Importantly, this work reflects what ADS has always understood: delirium does not belong to any single profession, specialty, population, or healthcare setting. Delirium crosses the lifespan and continuum of care, and improving outcomes requires the same breadth of perspective.
We are now organizing Rapid Action Teams to examine delirium care across healthcare settings and patient populations from detection/prevention through management. This work will synthesize evidence, identify gaps, and develop recommendations to inform an ADS consensus process and position paper.
To me, this is what it means for ADS to be the Voice, Community, and Thought Leader for delirium. Being the Voice means ensuring that the experiences of patients, families, clinicians, and researchers reach the places where decisions are made. Building Community means creating space for those perspectives to come together—and sometimes disagree—across disciplines, professions, career stages, and lived experiences. Being a Thought Leader means synthesizing what we know, acknowledging what we do not, and using our collective expertise to chart the path forward.
And that requires all of us.
Join a committee or Rapid Action Team. Share what is working—and what is not—in your health system. Bring us your research, clinical expertise, implementation challenges, and ideas. Participate in the conversations ahead. Challenge one another. Most importantly, continue bringing the voices of patients and families into our work.
When I stood beside that first poster in 2013, ADS gave me a place where I could bring an idea, have it taken seriously, have it challenged, and leave with a better question. It gave me a community in which I could learn, contribute, and eventually find my own voice.
I am deeply honored to now serve as President of that same community at a moment when our collective voice can influence delirium care well beyond the walls of our annual meeting.
We have their ear. Now, together, let’s make what we say count.
With gratitude,
Leanne M. Boehm, PhD, RN, ACNS-BC
President, American Delirium Society
