{"id":164298,"date":"2020-09-14T14:37:33","date_gmt":"2020-09-14T18:37:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?post_type=school-college-post&#038;p=164298"},"modified":"2020-09-15T09:22:09","modified_gmt":"2020-09-15T13:22:09","slug":"committed-curtailing-sepsis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2020\/09\/committed-curtailing-sepsis\/","title":{"rendered":"Committed to Curtailing Sepsis"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>With COVID-19 so pervasive, it\u2019s understandable how other serious medical problems could have a diminished presence in our consciousness. But nurses Elizabeth Haskell and Ashley Brennan-McBride have been keeping their focus on one particular condition.<\/p>\n<p>They make up UConn Health\u2019s sepsis team, charged with the task of mitigating the risk and reducing the mortality of sepsis, a potentially life-threatening illness in which infection triggers an adverse reaction that can lead to our own immune system essentially turning on us.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"wp-embedded-content\" data-secret=\"hExpAuTUac\"><p><a href=\"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2019\/09\/sepsis-infection-leads-critical-illness\/\">Sepsis: When Infection Leads to Critical Illness<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><iframe class=\"wp-embedded-content\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts\" security=\"restricted\" style=\"position: absolute; clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);\" title=\"&#8220;Sepsis: When Infection Leads to Critical Illness&#8221; &#8212; UConn Today\" src=\"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2019\/09\/sepsis-infection-leads-critical-illness\/embed\/#?secret=HhecUtCW0s#?secret=hExpAuTUac\" data-secret=\"hExpAuTUac\" width=\"500\" height=\"282\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt can result from any infection, and is the leading cause of mortality and readmission,\u201d Haskell says. \u201cTherefore, we must all remain aware and vigilant in identifying and treating sepsis in a timely manner.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Sepsis is a relatively common threat to hospitalized patients, and has become a priority for hospitals nationwide.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEvery hour that elapses without antibiotics increases mortality by 8 percent,\u201d Brennan-McBride says. \u201cSepsis can lead to death if not recognized early and treated quickly and appropriately.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>UConn Health established its own sepsis team and assigned Brennan-McBride and Haskell to it earlier this year, before the pandemic took hold.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBoth of us have critical care and emergency background experience, and so we&#8217;re very familiar with these patients and the different comorbidities and how ill they can get,\u201d Haskell says. \u201cEarly recognition and early therapy are really key elements in treating sepsis and preventing mortality. That really is what our job is focusing on.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOur role provides real-time surveillance of sepsis patients and allows us to intervene when appropriate,\u201d Brennan-McBride says. \u201cWe do so through collaboration with providers and nurses to ensure we are meeting our quality metrics for sepsis care.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s too soon to quantify the success of their efforts at UConn Health, and officially reported sepsis metrics lag to the previous fiscal year. But early signs are promising.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe do internal tracking and have seen a significant improvement in sepsis core metrics, and anticipate that our statistics will show a favorable trend in the near future,\u201d Haskell says.<\/p>\n<p>Sepsis is a concern that long predates COVID-19. While COVID-19 can lead to sepsis, this is most likely the result of bacterial infection in a person with COVID-19 rather than from the SARS-CoV-2 virus itself.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe still have much to learn about this relationship and the risk of sepsis among individuals with COVID-19,\u201d says <a href=\"https:\/\/health.uconn.edu\/find-a-provider\/physician\/Banach-David\">Dr. David Banach<\/a>, UConn Health hospital epidemiologist. \u201cWhat is clear is that sepsis prevention and early recognition and treatment are especially important among this particularly vulnerable population.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Nurses Elizabeth Haskell and Ashley Brennan-McBride lead UConn Health\u2019s effort to reduce sepsis risk and mortality.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":111,"featured_media":164304,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2193,1868],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[2010],"class_list":["post-164298","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hartford-county","category-meds"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-20 14:08:55","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164298","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/111"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=164298"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164298\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/164304"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164298"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=164298"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=164298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}