ADULT SEPSIS SCREEN and TREATMENT ALGORITHM BAYLOR UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER Publication Year: 2013
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ADULT SEPSIS SCREEN AND TREATMENT ALGORITHM BAYLOR UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER Publication Year: 2013 Summary: Hospital: Baylor University Medical Center The development and implementation of a nursing driven sepsis screening protocol and Location: Dallas, Texas treatment algorithm. Contact: John S Garrett, Associate Medical Director, Department of Emergency Medicine [email protected] Category: Hospital Metrics: . A: Arrival . Annual ED Volume: 117,571 . Hospital Beds: 1,065 . B: Bed Placement . Ownership: Baylor Healthcare System, . C: Clinician Initial Evaluation & Not-For-Profit Throughput . Trauma Level: 1 . E: Exit from the ED . Teaching Status: Yes Key Words: . Sepsis . Triage Tools Provided: . BHCS Adult Sepsis Screen & Treatment Algorithm Tools Provided: . Hahnemann University Hospital Clinical Areas Affected: Staff Involved: Triage Plan . Emergency Department . ED Staff . Nurses . Pharmacists . Physicians . Technicians Copyright © 2002‐2013 Urgent Matters 1 Innovation Severe sepsis and septic shock are major drivers of in-hospital mortality, with rates that are over 8 times higher than those associated with other inpatient admissions. When coupled with an apparent rise in incidence: hospital admission rates for severe sepsis and septic shock doubled between 2000 and 2008, sepsis is projected to be a growing source of mortality, morbidity, and healthcare cost within the United States. This data is especially pertinent to Emergency Departments (ED): effective treatments for patients with severe sepsis and septic shock are time-sensitive whereby early recognition and treatment significantly impacts mortality. Based upon growing evidence that rapid recognition and aggressive treatment significantly improves outcomes, the Surviving Sepsis Campaign (SSC) recently released updated guidelines detailing a standard operating procedure for early risk stratification and management of patients with severe sepsis and septic shock. These guidelines have been endorsed by the National Quality Forum (NQF). More specifically, these guidelines describe a 3 hour and 6 hour bundles of care to be completed in patients with severe sepsis and septic shock. In patients admitted to the ED with evidence of sepsis, the 3 hour bundle includes four aspects of patient care that occur within the first 3 hours following triage in the ED. These include the institution of aggressive screening for occult severe sepsis with serum lactates, obtaining blood cultures prior to antibiotic administration, the administration of broad spectrum antibiotics, and completion of a 30ml/kg crystalloid bolus. Those patients who fail to respond to the 3 hour bundle or have serum lactate of greater than 4 mg/gL are eligible for the 6 hour bundle. Importantly, multiple studies have demonstrated that a delay in the administration of effective antibiotics is associated with increased mortality in patients with severe sepsis and septic shock. More telling perhaps is a reported 7.6% increase in mortality for every hour delay in antibiotic administration following initial hypotension in patients with septic shock. Based upon this literature, the SSC suggests that broad- spectrum antibiotic administration should occur as soon as possible following the diagnosis of severe sepsis. Rapid identification of these patients in a busy ED is very difficult. Additionally, several events must occur, often in serial order, prior to the administration of antibiotics. Sepsis has long been noted to be a major driver of inpatient mortality within our institution. As such, it has been the focus of a continual quality improvement (CQI) project for the past 3 years at Baylor University Medical Center (BUMC). These CQI projects led to several improvements. One of these was the development of a hospital wide sepsis notification aimed at expediting the septic patients from the ED to the Intensive Care Unit. Additionally, this pulled Intensive Care nursing resources to the ED to help with patient care. These interventions dramatically improved ED disposition to ICU times, reducing this timeframe by almost 60% (374 minutes to 151 minutes). Additionally a sepsis screen based upon SIRS criteria was added to the initial triage forms completed by the triage nurse. A positive screen prompted the triage nurse to contact an EM physician for further instructions. Our Emergency Department set out to develop a nursing driven sepsis screening protocol and treatment algorithm whereby patients at risk for severe sepsis and septic shock would be rapidly identified in triage. A positive screen then triggers a multidisciplinary response involving ED nursing and technicians, radiology technicians, respiratory therapy, pharmacists, and Emergency Medicine physicians. The goal of this response was to perform the necessary tasks to: . Initiate broad spectrum antibiotics within 2 hours of triage . Complete the remainder of the 3 hour bundle of care as described by the NQF and SSC. Triage was defined at the time that first vital are entered into the chart. In the Baylor University Medical Center ED this occurs within 2-3 minutes of patient arrival as pulse rate and oxygen saturation are measured and recorded at the time chief complaint is collected. Despite these improvements, no impact was made on improving processes that would impact patient morbidity and mortality. Timeframes associated with triage to lactate result, triage to administration of antibiotics, and triage to completion of initial crystalloid bolus were essentially unchanged between July of 2009 and February of 2013.We recognized several major impediments in reaching our goal of triage to antibiotics within 2 hours and successful completion of the 3 hour bundle. In 2012, the ED at BUMC had an annual census of 117,571 patients. BUMC is a level 1 Copyright © 2002‐2013 Urgent Matters 2 trauma center and flagship hospital for the Baylor Healthcare System. It also serves as a training center for multiple levels of Emergency Medicine (EM) practitioners: we host a 1 month rotation for a local EM residency, are the training campus for a midlevel practitioner EM internship, and have rotating non-EM interns from other service lines within the hospital. As such protocol education and protocol mastery in our group or transient residents and mid-level providers is difficult. Additionally the average door to bed placement time at BUMC is 46 minutes. On average this left 74 minutes for provider evaluation, order entry, IV start, blood culture collection from two sites, lactate processing and resulting, antibiotic preparation, and antibiotic administration. Oftentimes these steps occurred in the setting of ongoing patient resuscitation. Innovation Implementation The team responsible for the development and implementation of the sepsis screen and treatment algorithm was a multidisciplinary group of ED nurses, EM physicians, and ED staff. With support of ED leadership, the primary team consisted of two ED nurse champions (Scott Garvin RN & Lisa Ball RN), ED nursing informatics (Millie Early RN), and EM physician champions (John Garrett MD & Matthew Muller MD). Each team member was instrumental and cooperatively involved in each aspect of the design, implementation, and ongoing education required for successful deployment of the algorithm. Given the limitations of our ED size and patient volume, we recognized that the delays associated with waiting for a provider to trigger a sepsis screening labs prevented rapid recognition and treatment of patients with occult severe sepsis and septic shock. As such a team comprised of representatives from ED nursing, Emergency Medicine, and the BUMC pharmacy met to develop a nursing based triage sepsis screen and protocol (Appendix 1: BHCS Adult Sepsis Screen & Treatment Algorithm). It was quickly realized that the triage nurse played a critical role in the early recognition and screening of septic patients. We had seen marked success in rapid mobilization of resources when the triage nurse is empowered to start workups and initiate treatment. This had become standard care at BUMC when identifying patients with STEMI, acute stroke, and trauma. We hoped that by coupling the existing sepsis screen with a nursing protocol that facilitated rapid treatment, we would remove the delays inherent in waiting for the provider's evaluation. Throughout this process the sepsis screen itself remained essentially unchanged. A positive screen was considered when two SIRS criteria existed in the setting of suspected infection, which the triage nurse would identify through a list of potential sources. The definition of SIRS was expanded to include high risk patients such as hypotension upon arrival. (Appendix 1) After linking the positive screen to a sepsis screening protocol the nurse triggered a process to: . Page an ED technician to draw labs and a blood culture, and then transport the sample to the lab; . Order a sepsis screening bundle containing a serum lactate, complete metabolic panel, and complete blood count with differential; and . Expedited processing within the ED laboratory. In the event that a bed was immediately available, this process was completed at the bedside prior to provider evaluation. In the event that no ED bed was available, this occurred in the triage area of the ED. Results from the screen were then called to the triage nurse. As noted in the Sepsis Algorithm (Appendix 1), if the serum lactate was abnormal (>2 mg/dL) or the patient needed immediate resuscitation, the triage nurse was to immediately bed the patient,