Overview of Sepsis

Description

This session is aimed at all out of hospital clinicians, GPs, Nurses, Pharmacists, Paramedics, Community Midwives and those providing urgent or unscheduled care. It will provide an introduction to key facts about sepsis and outline the size of the problem, common community presentations and key actions that influence outcomes.

Learning Objectives

By the end of this session you will be able to:

• Describe the differences between infection, sepsis and septic shock
• Recognise the scale and impact of sepsis within the UK
• Recall the frequency of community and hospital derived sepsis
• Identify key features that should alert the clinician to the possibility of sepsis in a patient with infection
• List potential strategies that can influence sepsis admissions and deaths
• Describe the urgency of treatment to influence mortality particularly within the septic shock sub-group

Sepsis is a potentially life-threatening condition triggered by infection.

Current estimates suggest that as many as 123 000 cases occur in England each year with approximately 37 000 deaths annually. Only 30% of those cases develop whilst the patient is in hospital, the rest are patients admitted from the community.