Improving the Identification and Treatment of Sepsis Through The Use of a Pediatric Specific Sepsis Screening Tool

It is critical for sepsis screening to be implemented and studied to identify possible sepsis in the pediatric population. Currently many acute care settings use an adult based screening tool for all populations. This study proposed that a new pediatric specific sepsis screen should be utilized in comparison with the previous tool to address the need for improving identification of sepsis. Therefore, the specific purpose of this study is to determine if the implementation of an evidence-based, pediatric specific sepsis screening tool improved the identification of sepsis in pediatric emergency department patients. Our findings suggest that many of the pediatric patients diagnosed with sepsis do not fall into a category of severe sepsis in need of aggressive lab and fluid treatment. This may be the cause for less than half of patients receiving blood cultures prior to administration of antibiotics and minimal collection of lab values. Findings also demonstrated compliance issues from nurses with about 1 of 5 patients not receiving screening. Nurses must be vigilant in screening the pediatric population for sepsis. No significant difference found between two screening tools, however, it is recommended for improvements to ensure proper compliance of screening for at-risk pediatric patients