26.07.12
All NEWS is good news
A standardised system for measuring severity of illness in acute patients could streamline training, improve standards of care and provide a valuable pool of data to aid research.
The new NEWS system could significantly raise consistency in how doctors and nurses measure and react to changes in patient measurements.
If implemented nationally, it could reduce confusion and thus errors when medical staff are required to work in different areas, as the scoring system will remain the same.
As well as improving efficiency, it could save thousands of lives each year, by reducing the high level of error due to monitoring or misdiagnosis.
In this instance, it seems centralising measurements would provide nothing but benefits, and has been proved to provide outcomes that equal all existing systems. This means that while local differences may exist, and certainly there are more than enough different ways of measuring and escalating care, no particular system is any better than what the RCP is proposing.
Hopefully all trusts will understand and accept the advantages of a single, national system, and implement NEWS as soon as possible.
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