Improving timely recognition and treatment of sepsis in the pediatric ICU.
Early recognition and treatment of sepsis is a critical safety issue. The authors of this study aimed to reduce the frequency of delayed sepsis recognition in a pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) through the use of an automated clinical decision support tool (CDS) prompting multidisciplinary sepsis huddles. After a two-year period, the average number of days between episodes of delayed sepsis recognition improved from one episode every 9 days to one every 28 days, and the median time to antibiotics decreased from 1.53 hours to 1.05 hours, representing a significant reduction.