Effects of Nursing Practice Guidelines for Sepsis Patients at Emergency Department of Chiang Kham Hospital, Phayao Province

Abstract

This retrospective study aimed to study the effectiveness of nursing practice guidelines for sepsis patients. The participants were 428 patients diagnosed with sepsis who were admitted to the inpatient department or intensive care unit at Chiang Kham Hospital after receiving emergency department services. The participants were divided into two groups, with 214 patients in each group, to evaluate the impact of the nursing practice guidelines both before and after their implementation. The research instruments consisted of (1) a general record form of the participants, (2) an outcome of caring for sepsis patients, and (3) a nursing practice guideline for sepsis patients. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze data.

The findings indicate that the implementation of nursing practice guidelines led to an improvement in the quality of care for sepsis patients as follows: (1) the percentage of patients who received blood collection for hemoculture before antibiotic administration increased from 93.9% to 100%, (2) the percentage of patients who received antibiotics within 1 hour of diagnosis increased from 91.6% to 96.7%, (3) the percentage of patients who received intravenous fluids at a rate of 30m/kg/hr increased from 80.3% to 87.8%, and (4) the percentage of patients who had access to the emergency medical service system increased from 17.6% to 39.0%. The findings suggest that healthcare providers can use the nursing practice guidelines to enhance the quality of care for sepsis patients, reduce complications and mortality rate.