A study into pre-alerts to North East hospitals for sepsis

Abstract

Abstract published with permission. A study of sepsis patients pre-alerted into hospitals was conducted in the North East of England from October 2011 to March 2013. This study was conducted to assess the effectiveness of the introduction of a sepsis education programme, which included a sepsis screening tool, and to try and establish the number of sepsis cases encountered by paramedics in the region. The results of this study show that the number of cases pre-alerted into the hospitals increased with the introduction of the screening tool, and gave some indications as to the number of sepsis patients encountered in pre-hospital care. We interpret the increase in pre-alerts as an increased awareness of sepsis, but see little impact on the treatment delivered by paramedics. We draw some conclusions on the number of suspected cases of sepsis seen in the pre-hospital environment but without linking to hospital data are unable to give definitive figures.