INTRODUCTION

• Determining how the NEWS2 could be used to better identify patients likely to have sepsis who were at immediate risk of serious clinical deterioration and required urgent clinical intervention
• Highlighting that that a NEWS2 score of 5 or more is a key threshold for an urgent clinical alert and response
• Improving the recording of the use of oxygen and the NEWS2 scoring of recommended oxygen saturations in patients with hypercapnic respiratory failure (most often due to COPD)
• Recognising the importance of new-onset confusion, disorientation, delirium or any acute reduction in the Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) score as a sign of potentially serious clinical deterioration, by including new confusion as part of the AVPU scoring scale (which becomes ACVPU).

Various additional refinements to the NEWS2 chart were also considered and implemented.

CONTRIBUTORS