Recognising and responding to acute illness in patients in hospital

doi:10.1136/bmj.39395.497928.80

BMJ 2007;335:1165-1166 (8 December), doi:10.1136/bmj.39395.497928.80 (published 29 November 2007)

Editorials

Recognising and responding to acute illness in patients in hospital

Leadership, culture change, education, support, and regularauditing are key

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

The recognition of and response to potentially life threateningacute illness on hospital wards is of increasing concern. Changesin the type and availability of staff combined with the needto manage patients with increasingly complex problems have highlightedthis concern.

Patients who develop severe organ failure often have abnormalphysiological signs, sometimes for hours before their final"collapse." Attempts to improve how we identify and manage thesepatients disregarded the lack of robust evidence,¹ and nationalpolicies and initiatives promoting new models of care were issuedin England (critical care outreach services),² ³ the UnitedStates (rapid response teams),⁴ and Australia (medical emergencyteams).⁵

In their paper in this week’s BMJ, Buist and colleaguesreport their experience of a model that incorporates a methodto improve the recognition of acute illness (medical emergencyteam calling criteria) with skilled personnel (the medical emergencyteam) to ensure a timely and appropriate . . . [Full text of this article]

Kathryn M Rowan, director¹, David A Harrison, statistician¹

¹ Intensive Care National Audit and Research Centre (ICNARC), London WC1H 9HR

kathy.rowan@icnarc.org

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Six year audit of cardiac arrests and medical emergency team calls in an Australian outer metropolitan teaching hospital: Michael Buist, Julia Harrison, Ellie Abaloz, and Susan Van Dyke
BMJ 2007 335: 1210-1212. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]