Saving lives through better sepsis care

The UK Sepsis Summit was recently hosted by bioMérieux at the University of Nottingham. Taking place 5-6 September, the event provided an opportunity for multiple stakeholders engaged within the sepsis patient pathway to come together and share best practice. This ‘call to action’ event saw over 100 healthcare professionals attend over the two days, which included access to the lecture programme, panel discussion, poster competition and product demonstration clinics. The discussions held at The UK Sepsis Summit highlighted that a collaborative, integrated and optimised pathway is crucial to enable informed clinical decision making and improved patient pathways, and ultimately manage antimicrobial resistance and sepsis. 

CSJ attended the first day of the summit, and it was clear that collaboration and integration were key themes of the event. To make an impact and address the growing threat of AMR and sepsis, we must all proactively work together to adhere to the guidelines and implement processes and innovation, which will improve patient outcomes. The event attracted a variety of healthcare professionals all engaged with different parts of the patient pathway – including patients, nurses, lab professionals, clinical scientists, consultants, policymakers, and charity representatives. The mixture of delegates fed the discussion around collaboration and highlighted how important it is to align on strategy and feedback on improvements.

Speaking at the event, Dr. Ron Daniels, founder and joint CEO of the UK Sepsis Trust, highlighted the scale and impact of sepsis. The UK Sepsis Trust was first established in 2010, when public awareness of sepsis was “almost non-existent” and health professional awareness “wasn’t embedded into the UK’s healthcare system”. Dr. Daniels commented that, although he was “proud of the progress achieved over the past 13 years”, there is still a huge burden of sepsis to address.