RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Strengthening sepsis care at a tertiary care teaching hospital in New Delhi, India
JF BMJ Open Quality
JO BMJ Open Qual
FD British Medical Journal Publishing Group
SP e001335
DO 10.1136/bmjoq-2020-001335
VO 10
IS Suppl 1
A1 Charu Malhotra
A1 Akshay Kumar
A1 Ankit Kumar Sahu
A1 Akshaya Ramaswami
A1 Sanjeev Bhoi
A1 Praveen Aggarwal
A1 Rakesh Lodha
A1 Arti Kapil
A1 Sonali Vaid
A1 Nitesh Joshi
YR 2021
UL http://bmjopenquality.bmj.com/content/10/Suppl_1/e001335.abstract
AB Introduction Failure of early identification of sepsis in the emergency department (ED) leads to significant delays in antibiotic administration which adversely affects patient outcomes.Aim The primary objective of our Quality Improvement (QI) project was to reduce the door-to-antibiotic time (DTAT) by 30% from the preintervention in patients with suspected sepsis. Secondary objectives were to increase the blood culture collection rate by 30% from preintervention, investigate the predictors of improving DTAT and study the effect of these interventions on 24-hour in-hospital mortality.Methods This QI project was conducted in the ED of a tertiary care teaching hospital of North India; the ED receives approximately 400 patients per day. Adult patients with suspected sepsis presenting to our ED were included in the study, between January 2019 and December 2020. The study was divided into three phases; preintervention phase (100 patients), intervention phase (100 patients) and postintervention phase (93 patients). DTAT and blood cultures prior to antibiotic administration was recorded for all patients. Blood culture yield and 24-hour in-hospital mortality were also recorded using standard data templates. Change ideas planned by the Sepsis QI Team were implemented after conducting plan-do-study-act cycles.Results The median DTAT reduced from 155 min in preintervention phase to 78 min in postintervention phase. Drawing of blood cultures prior to antibiotic administration improved by 67%. Application of novel screening tool at triage was found to be an independent predictor of reduced DTAT.Conclusion Our QI project identified the existing lacunae in implementation of the sepsis bundle which were dealt with in a stepwise manner. The sepsis screening tool and on-site training improved care of patients with sepsis. A similar approach can be used to deal with complex quality issues in other high-volume low-resource settings.Data are available on reasonable request. Data are available on reasonable request to the corresponding author.