Tools and resources related to sepsis that will help support the knowledge and understanding of sepsis aimed at commissioners, clinicians and healthcare professionals.

Guidance

• Sepsis guidance implementation advice for adults describes an operational definition of sepsis and supports the implementation of the NICE guidelines on the identification and treatment of sepsis.
• Sepsis: recognition, diagnosis and early management: NICE recommendations on identifying/assessing people with suspected sepsis including recommendations on risk factors/stratification.
• The latest version of the National Early Warning Score (NEWS), first produced in 2012 and updated in December 2017.

Tools and resources

• Suspicion of Sepsis (SoS) Insight Dashboard is a tool that accurately measures the number of patients admitted to hospital who are at risk of sepsis. It will enable the NHS to track improvement, such as rates of survival and length of hospital stays through measuring the number of patients coming into hospital as an emergency with a severe bacterial infection categorised as ‘suspicion of sepsis’.
• Case study: Royal Cornwall Hospital – Improving sepsis screening and treatment describes how forming a cross-speciality panel and employing a dedicated sepsis nurse improved patient outcomes.
• Case study: Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS FT: Improving initial sepsis management.
• Case study: Improvement in early detection and prompt treatment of sepsis across Weston Area Health NHS Trust, describes how the Lead Nurse for Deteriorating Patients and Sepsis, and the Director of Quality and Safety at the trust identified unwarranted variation in the rates of detection and prompt treatment, and addressed this through a number of targeted interventions to improve patient outcomes.
• RCGP blog by Dr Rachel Marsden – Building a ‘sepsis aware’ healthcare system.
• Sepsis pathway: Everything NICE has said on the recognition, diagnosis and early management of sepsis in an interactive flowchart.
• NHS RightCare Scenario, produced with the cross-system Sepsis Programme Board demonstrates the opportunities to reduce the unwarranted variation in sepsis care.
• NHS England calls for all commissioners, clinicians and health economies in England to come together to address and reduce the variation found in the care of sepsis for all patients with the aim of improving outcomes and quality of life.
• To support a standard approach to spotting and managing sepsis, the UK Sepsis Trust has created a series of clinical tools and learning resources which are free to use.
• BMJ Best Practice: Sepsis in adults includes sections on diagnosis (history and examination, diagnostic investigations); management (treatment algorithm for acute/presumed sepsis) and follow-up.
• RCGP sepsis toolkit provides a collection of tools, knowledge and current guidance to support the identification and appropriate management of patients with sepsis.

Training and education

• Sepsis in children: advice for health visitors and school nurses: This PHE document sets out what public health nurses, health visitors and school nurses need to know about sepsis and the advice to give to parents.
• A series of videos from Re-act outlining key factors that impact on the deterioration of child patients’ condition.
• NEWS2 training is an online training resource provides an opportunity to learn about the implementation and use of the National Early Warning Score system which has been introduced across the NHS.
• THINK SEPSIS is a HEE programme aimed at improving the diagnosis and management of those with sepsis.
• Sepsis in paediatrics is a learning package from HEE aimed at improving the rates of accurate diagnosis and treatment of sepsis in children.
• Sepsis-Blood Culture Pathway Improvement is a suite of e-learning modules aimed at patient-facing staff, laboratory staff, neonatal/paediatric staff, consultant microbiologists and members of multidisciplinary teams involved in diagnosing sepsis. These have been developed in collaboration with the British Society of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy and NHS England.