Introduction

In recent years, health care professionals have come to accept that the recognition, diagnosis and treatment of severely septic patients requires improvement. In order to achieve the greatest benefit for the greatest number of patients, we must now address the recognition and immediate treatment of severe sepsis in areas outside Critical Care.

You can make a difference

SurviveSEPSIS aims to address each of these issues. This manual, and the accompanying training course, will enable you to appreciate how important sepsis is, to spot the patient with sepsis, contribute to the delivery of the Surviving Sepsis Campaign Care Bundles and to know when to refer to Critical Care. Those involved in implementing the bundles at your organisation- this may be you- will also need to ensure that data is collected so that your performance as a unit can be monitored.

Who can make this
difference?

This course is aimed at all health care professionals working both within acute and Critical Care areas and on the general ward. All health care professionals have a role to play in delivery of the recommendations of surviveSEPSIS and the Surviving Sepsis Campaign, be they nurses, doctors, physiotherapists or technical support workers. Care is best delivered as a team. This requires that:

all staff are aware of the condition
systems are in place to support recognition of the septic patient
effective, clear lines of communication exist between team members
there is a team desire to deliver the best known care
a process, or care pathway, is used to ensure that elements of care are delivered in the right order and with no gaps
data is collected and performance against standards monitored