Improving Sepsis Outcomes Through Early Recognition

Sepsis remains a leading cause of mortality in hospitals, making early recognition critical to improving patient outcomes. This quality improvement project aimed to implement a systematic early sepsis recognition protocol for nurses in a busy medical-surgical unit. The project’s objectives were to increase nurses’ knowledge of the signs and symptoms of sepsis, reduce the time to intervention, and ultimately lower sepsis-related complications and mortality rates. Preliminary results, education and protocol resulted in a 20% reduction in sepsis-related mortality and a 30% increase in early sepsis identification.