The Paediatric Observation Priority Score: Detecting Serious Illness & Aiding Safe Discharge

Clinicians in primary care, secondary care and the ambulance service often struggle to identify and prioritise children due to a low incidence of serious illness in the UK, and lack of clear discriminators identifying serious illness. Recent reports from the National Patient Safety Agency and Confidential Enquiry into Maternal and Child Deaths recommend national uptake of a system to identify children who may be seriously unwell.

Many are familiar with the concept of EWS (Early Warning Scores) however when children arrive at Emergency Departments they often have deranged physiological parameters as a result of fever or fear which make the application of traditional systems poorly specific (i.e there are lots of false positives which may result in unnecessary tests or admissions).

The Paediatric Observation Priority Score (POPS) is a bespoke Emergency and Urgent care checklist which quickly scores (between 0-16) acutely ill children on a combination of physiological, behavioural and risk identifiers using easy to collect data.

This enables staff (even if inexperienced) to assess, prioritise and treat acutely ill children, and manage risk in busy clinical areas. Aside from the rapid detection of critically unwell children potential cost savings include fewer referrals for hospital treatment (current risk-averse practice results in over-referral), fewer serious adverse events (missed serious illness) and reducing numbers or costs of litigation claims.

POPS has been validated locally and externally and important has no financial copyright or licence implications. It is free to use and be developed as other health care professionals see fit.

All we ask is that you let us know if you are utilising the system so we can share good practice!

Please watch the video below and visit http://bit.ly/popstool for further information. Look forward to hearing from you Dr. Damian Roland ([email protected])