Clinical deterioration in hospital inpatients: the need for another paradigm shift

Jones, Daryl A; Dunbar, Nicola J; Bellomo, Rinaldo

doi:10.5694/mja11.10865

Topics

Proactive recognition and response, pre-emptive management

Despite improvements in medical therapy and improved outcomes, patients admitted to acute care hospitals may suffer clinical deterioration and potentially avoidable morbidity. Recent reports show that patients admitted to hospital suffer cardiac arrests at a rate between 0.66 and 11.2 per 1000 admissions,1 ,2 and the approximately 80% mortality rate due to in-hospital cardiac arrests has not changed since the description of cardiopulmonary resuscitation more than 50 years ago.3,4

1 Department of Intensive Care, Austin Health, Melbourne, VIC.
2 Department of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine, Monash University, Melbourne, VIC.
3 Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care, Sydney, NSW.
4 Australian and New Zealand Research Centre, Monash University, Melbourne, VIC.

Correspondence: Daryl.Jones@austin.org.au

Competing interests:

Rinaldo Bellomo works as a paid consultant for Philips Healthcare in the development of monitoring technology for general wards. Daryl Jones has received consultancy fees from Eastern Health and a grant from the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care for a multicentre study on outcomes of MET patients.

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