Conceptualisation, development and implementation of the Medical Emergency Team (MET) as a system of management to improve outcomes for seriously ill patients

This thesis covers research around the Medical Emergency Team (MET) system, describing its development, evaluation and other related research that evolved as a result of the MET concept. The basic problem that prompted development of the METsystem was related to the inadequate care given to the seriously ill in acute hospitals. This thesis contains background research on some of the reasons why a MET system may be useful, including the limited skills and knowledge of medical training and the sort of acute problems encountered in a hospital at night. Research then describes how the MET system works, including published data on when and how often the teamis called, the type of patient the team is called to, the interventions performed by the team, and the outcome of patients on whom a MET was called. At the same time research was being performed around outcome indicators used to measure theeffectiveness of the MET system, resulting in the use of cardiac arrests, deaths and unanticipated admission to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) as common end-points for research in this area. Further research demonstrated that potentially preventable antecedents were common before serious illness The thesis then concentrates on howeffective the MET system was in reducing death and serious adverse events. The first study compared a hospital where a MET system had been implemented to two control hospitals and found there was a reduction in admissions to the ICU but afteradjustment, not for deaths and cardiac arrests. The second study used a cluster randomised methodology, enrolling 23 hospitals across Australia, comparing the three end-points described above. The study found no difference between both groups. It did highlight some interesting areas around the importance of effective implementation in determining the effectiveness of systems in health. Other publications have described the importance of developing effective ways of caring for the seriously ill outside traditional areas such as ICUs. The MET system, or variations on it, is nowimplemented in many hospitals in Australia and around the world and there have been two international MET conferences held in North America and international guidelines on the MET concept established