Programme aim
This programme had four aims: to help organisations improve their outcomes with deteriorating patients, to share best practice in deterioration management, measurement, education and improvement, to standardise deterioration management across the whole care pathway, and to share outcomes performance
Programme focus
This programme focused on standardising deterioration and sepsis management across the whole care pathway throughout the Thames Vallay region, which includes the use of NEWS2 as a common language across healthcare.
Programme details
All 5 of the acute Trusts, the ambulance Trust and community in-patient areas are using NEWS2 and RESTORE2 was being spread as the model of choice for care homes in our region.
As part of the Covid-19 response we are also supported the roll out of Covid-19 Virtual Wards.
Sepsis is the number one cause of hospital mortality. It is under-recognised, under-estimated and under-treated. It is the most expensive admission diagnosis. There are over 650,000 admissions to English NHS trusts per year with sepsis infection and around 80,000 deaths.
By improving sepsis recognition, timeliness and reliability of treatment, a third of these deaths would be prevented.
Geoff’s Story is a a short (eight-minute) film about one man’s encounter with sepsis. It is a powerful reminder of how delayed diagnosis may have life-threatening consequences, but also how prompt recognition and management of sepsis can and does make the difference between life and death.
The regional Sepsis Group was convened in February 2016 and has met quarterly since. The group has agreed and implemented regional sepsis management pathways based on existing national guidelines and toolkits, updated in July 2018 to include NEWS 2 criteria. We hosted a workshop on the development of our regional pathway at the National Patient Safety Conference in May 2017.
Read more about the work of the group in article published in RCP Clinical Medicine Journal June 2018 and poster presented at Patient First, November 2017 and Bristol Patient Safety Conference 2018.
Sepsis – a regional patient-centred learning event was held in May 2018. Find the evaluation report and presentations from patients, relatives, our regional clinical lead and the UK Sepsis Trust CEO here.
We hosted a ‘working together’ event focusing on the new NICE sepsis guidelines on 19 September 2016. Download the presentations and read an evaluation of the event here.
Our contributions to measurement of sepsis
Using routine coding data, we have developed a pragmatic methodology to define and
measure a broad range of infection presentations associated with a risk of sepsis (“suspicion of sepsis”; SOS). We have applied this to regional data, and shared the results with Trusts and CCGs in our region, and with national stakeholders at the Sepsis Unplugged Conference in Brighton in October 2016. A paper detailing this work has been published in BMJ Open and a “how to guide” has been developed to support replication of the methodology. This has been summarised in this case study. Our work has attracted interest from ICHP AHSN who have developed an award winning national sepsis dashboard, using the SOS methodology, launched in September 2018.
Further information: