It’s one of the most serious illnesses you’ve never heard of. Sepsis affects more than a million Americans every year and is the ninth leading cause of disease-related deaths, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Still, many people don’t know about sepsis, which can occur as the body responds to severe infection. Often referred to as “blood poisoning,” sepsis is a serious complication of infection that kills more than 258,000 people of all ages across the U.S. every year—that’s more than the number of deaths from prostate cancer, breast cancer and AIDS combined. Common causes of sepsis include pneumonia, urinary tract infections and skin infections caused by infected insect and dog bites or scratches.
Pat Davis, DNP, director of Nursing Advancement, Education and Practice at UTMB, stressed the importance of recognizing symptoms, which can include fever, nausea, low blood pressure and diarrhea.
“Early sepsis awareness for all providers is so important because minutes matter when the cluster of sepsis symptoms occur,” said Davis. “We all must be aware and vigilant. Care is sometimes delayed when sepsis is overlooked or misdiagnosed. Getting antibiotics and additional treatments started immediately is the key to a successful recovery and reduction in deaths from sepsis.”
At UTMB, putting a stop to sepsis has become a priority over the past several years. In 2013, the Texas Hospital Association gave UTMB the Bill Aston Award for Quality in recognition of its improvement of sepsis mortality with early identification and treatment. UTMB staff developed a protocol for treating and reducing sepsis, resulting in a 70-percent drop in mortality caused by the infection.
In recognition of Sepsis Awareness and Prevention Month in September, UTMB organized activities to promote awareness, including informational booths with fliers, a poster contest offering Clinical Competency and Advancement Program points and drawings for prizes. Badge cards with sepsis warning signs and statistics also were distributed to UTMB health care workers.
More than 20 posters were submitted for the 2015 Sepsis Awareness and Prevention Poster Contest from areas of UTMB Nursing and other interprofessional areas. This year’s winning poster was created by Barbara Calloway, Veronica Cordoba and Michele Grace, from the UTMB Angleton Danbury Campus. Their poster, titled “Operation Sepsis—Education: Keeping Patients in the Game of Life,” also won first place in its category at the Texas Medical Center’s 1 Voice for Sepsis Poster Contest on Sept. 30 in Houston.
As nurses in the Emergency Department, Grace and her colleagues are always on the lookout for sepsis symptoms.
“Every patient who comes through the ED gets a screening for sepsis,” said Grace. “When we see patients, we are doing the investigation and are trying to identify it quickly so we can get them the antibiotics they need as quickly as possible. We want everyone to know that sepsis is a huge deal and can affect anyone at any age—it even killed Superman. Christopher Reeve died of sepsis after a wound got infected.”
Other Winning Entries
Second place went to “Sepsis: Germs Gone Wild,” by Kathleen Denke,
Judy Ramirez and Dawn White from the Department of Perioperative
Nursing, Day Surgery Unit, Galveston Campus.
Third place went to “One Day of Sepsis Care: UTMB vs. World – SSCIMPreSS
Study,” by Charles Mitchell, Melinda Tillman, Dona Creson,
Dr. William Mileski and George Kramer, PhD, from the Departments
of Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine.
Special recognition goes to Jane Gonzalez and Catherine Ivash, DNP, for coordinating the committee that planned the Sepsis Awareness and Prevention Month activities.