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From the Fall 2006 issue of Dove Tales, the Provena Health employee magazine Every day, 600 to1,000 people in the United States die due to complications that can be traced to a syndrome known as sepsis, which is a complex range of clinical conditions that arise as our bodies respond to infection. If conditions evolve into severe sepsis, multiple organ failure and eventual death can become extremely likely. Both mortality rates and the cost of caring for sepsis patients are projected to increase significantly as the population ages and more elderly patients receive complex care in ICUs. Sepsis can be an aggressive, rapid killer (the 11th leading cause of death overall, in fact!) but unfortunately, widespread awareness about management, diagnosis and treatment are relatively low. That's why Provena Health hospitals have made the commitment to raise awareness of this serious medical condition, and are among the first hospitals in Illinois to join an international coalition aimed at decreasing sepsis fatalities. Aptly dubbed the "Surviving Sepsis Campaign," the program is sponsored in the U.S. by the Society for Critical Care Medicine (SCCM). Participating organizations are joining forces in an effort to reduce sepsis deaths by 20 percent over the course of the next five years. In its most advanced form - septic shock - mortality rates are nearly 60 percent, which is why the key to successful treatment of sepsis is rapid and timely intervention. In the past decade, a number of new therapies have been shown to significantly improve outcomes and reduce mortality in patients with sepsis and septic shock, but these therapies have not been widely used, and their potential impact on sepsis survival has not been realized. In an effort to implement these new therapies and interventions across our Provena system, physician and nursing champions for this initiative have been identified in each of the local hospitals ministries, and in June, those individuals participated in a "train-the-trainer" - style clinical education as part of a regional seminar with other healthcare systems. "This initiative has the potential to make a major impact on how we manage sepsis cases in our ICUs. The sepsis protocols endorsed by the the SCCM have proven to improve survival and patient outcomes, and we are committed to implementing these evidence-based approaches," says Sue Giacchino, RN, director of the surgical intensive care unit at Provena St. Mary's Hospital in Kankakee, who has been centrally involved in the early phases of the "Surviving Sepsis Campaign." Provena Health is in an especially unique position to make a significant difference in sepsis survival rates due to the eICU technology in our critical care units. The eICU provides an extra layer of coverage through an off-site monitoring of critical care patients by intensive care physicians and nurses. By utilizing the critical care telemedicine expertise and infrastructure already in place, the Provena eICU connection has the ability to disseminate best practices and improve clinical outcomes across our adult ICUs through patient identification, data collection, protocol implementation and, of course, the additional layer of critical care they already provide. |
