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Fact Sheets
Both Northern Health and the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Healthcare have produced short fact sheets which provide a summary of the standard.
Live Literature Searches
Click below to view live literature searches on PubMed on key topics surrounding Standard 3: Preventing and Controlling Healthcare-Associated Infection.
Standard 8: Recognising and Responding to Acute Deterioration
Recognising that a patient’s condition is deteriorating and responding to their needs in an appropriate and timely way is an essential component of safe and high-quality care. Serious adverse events such as unexpected death and cardiac arrest often follow observable deterioration in a patient’s condition.
Early identification of deterioration may improve outcomes and reduce the intervention required to stabilise patients whose condition deteriorates.
There is evidence that the warning signs of clinical deterioration are not always identified or acted on appropriately. Factors that can contribute to a failure to recognise and respond to a deteriorating patient include lack of understanding of the signs and symptoms of deterioration, and lack of systems to respond to deterioration.
Systems to recognise deterioration early and respond to it appropriately need to address these factors and apply across a health service organisation. This standard identifies the systems and skills needed to ensure that a patient’s deterioration is recognised promptly and appropriate action is taken.
Recommended Articles
Sharon L. Bourke, Lisa McKenna, Simon Cooper, Louisa Lam. Contextual determinants impacting final year nursing students' emergency team communication during deteriorating patient simulations: A grounded theory study. Nurse Education Today, Volume 138, 2024.
Liu, K., Lin, N., Jin, T. et al. Association between pediatric postoperative delirium and regional cerebral oxygen saturation: a prospective observational study. BMC Psychiatry 24, 367 (2024).
Shin HW, Kwak JS, Choi YJ, et al. Efficacy and safety of perioperative melatonin for postoperative delirium in patients undergoing surgery: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Journal of International Medical Research. 2024;52(5).
Jenna Wixon-Genack, Shelton W Wright, Natalie L Cobb Ortega, Viriya Hantrakun, Kristina E Rudd, Prapit Teparrukkul, Direk Limmathurotsakul, T Eoin West, Prognostic Accuracy of Screening Tools for Clinical Deterioration in Adults With Suspected Sepsis in Northeastern Thailand: A Cohort Validation Study, Open Forum Infectious Diseases, Volume 11, Issue 5, May 2024
