Improving timely recognition and treatment of sepsis in the pediatric ICU.
Vidrine R, Zackoff M, Paff Z, et al. Improving timely recognition and treatment of sepsis in the pediatric ICU. Jt Comm J Qual Patient Saf. 2020;46(5):299-307. doi:10.1016/j.jcjq.2020.02.005.
Early recognition and treatment of sepsis is a critical safety issue. The authors of this study aimed to reduce the frequency of delayed sepsis recognition in a pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) through the use of an automated clinical decision support tool (CDS) prompting multidisciplinary sepsis huddles. After a two-year period, the average number of days between episodes of delayed sepsis recognition improved from one episode every 9 days to one every 28 days, and the median time to antibiotics decreased from 1.53 hours to 1.05 hours, representing a significant reduction.