Hospital at Night and iBleep - The Links to Safety

Acutely Ill Patients Guidance and Improving Patient Outcomes

The National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) recently launched a set of guidance Acutely Ill patients in hospital - recognition of and response to acute illness of adults in hospital looking at the early recognition, escalation and management of patients. Acute care is a high risk clinical area where the interventions required are often complex and associated with significant risk to individual patients and the delivery of care is often delayed.

These concerns have been challenging to healthcare. The guidelines go some way to addressing the components of care patients should expect. The guidance also makes a number of recommendations including the use of a Hospital at Night team as part of the response to patient deterioration. To support trusts with implementation and using the guidance, a number of tools are being developed and a conference was held to showcase the work and support strategies.

The conference introduced the tools developed by NICE to support their guidance. These include a framework of competencies required by the ward teams to effectively manage acutely ill patients and will present examples of Track and Trigger systems. The day provided an opportunity for delegates to learn about the complementary work in this field that is being undertaken by the NPSA, Skills for Health - Workforce Projects Team's Hospital at Night team and the Institute for Innovation and Improvement. Hospital at Night and iBleep have produced a booklet Hospital at Night - The Links to Safety, which is available now.