Project Presentation – How the "Catania Sepsis Net-Working" Project Is Making a Difference in Italy
Earlier this month, we announced the winners of the 2019 Global Sepsis Awards. In addition to the five winners, nine other entities were commended for their valuable contribution in the global fight against sepsis.
Over the coming months, we will give both the 2019 GSA Award Winners as well as the activities and initiatives by the entities that were commended the possibility to share their projects and initiatives in more detail on our websites, starting today with the “U.O. Quality Management and Patients Safety – Azienda Ospedaliero – Universitaria Catania” from Italy.
The U.O. Quality Management and Patients Safety – Azienda Ospedaliero – Universitaria Catania, Italy
The “Catania Sepsis Net-Working ” project has the purpose to reduce the mortality from sepsis in the hospitals of Catania.
A Multidisciplinary Team (MT) has produced a document that shown 10 best practices of sepsis management. Approximately 900 health workers were involved in training activities about best practices.
Periodically, a group of auditors (physicians and nurses), examines the clinical records and collects the data through an IT-platform.
We promoted different awareness-raising activities: the involvement of sepsis survivors and parents, Davide Morana (2018) and Melissa Mead (2017); the organization of a posters competition about sepsis for resident physicians; a basket tournament for the students of medicine school .
We registered from 2015 to 2018 an increase of cases of sepsis or septic shock diagnosis (from 109 to 694 cases), an increase of complete clinical evaluation for patients arriving in the ED (from 63.2% to 79.8%) and we registered also a statistically significant difference, related to the number of good practices for patient in the first hour of arrival at the ED (at least 6 and 8 good practices) .
The increase of sepsis cases numbers would seem to demonstrate an increase in awareness of sepsis by our hospital physicians as evidence of our improvement initiatives.
The future of our improvement program will be to continue sharing knowledge and to disseminate and support a best practice culture. We will, also, hold a training event on September 13, 2019, we will distribute watches for the EDs of all the Catania hospitals upon which will be written "time is life: think about sepsis", we will organize a basketball tournament, 2nd edition, for the students of medicine school. We will repropose posters competition for resident physicians. Young nurses will organize a photo exhibition on the theme "time is life: think about sepsis".
The Global Sepsis Awards, which are sponsored by the Erin Kay Flatley Memorial Foundation, honor outstanding efforts to increase sepsis awareness and raise the quality of sepsis prevention and management.
The awards are granted in three categories, namely governments and healthcare authorities, non-governmental organizations, patient advocate or healthcare provider groups, and individuals, consistent with the aims of the World Sepsis Declaration and the World Sepsis Day Movement.
Winners in category II and III will receive $2,500 prize money each. Applications and nominations for the 2020 GSA Awards open in January 2020 and close on March 31st, 2020.