National Early Warning Scores: National Ambulance Survey Headline Findings Innovation Agency (North West Coast) April 2018

The National NEWS Survey NHS Improvement tasked the 15 Patient Safety Collaboratives with supporting the NHS in all sectors in their region to adopt the National Early Warning Score in the form of NEWS2 The PSMU ran a baseline survey to map current use of NEWS in acute settings in November 2017 A subsequent survey for Ambulance trusts was carried out in March 2018 All results for both surveys are available here

The National NEWS Survey This slide set contains: Headline results of the ambulance survey from a national view point More detailed results at individual trust level to inform local work

The National NEWS Survey: national headlines Of 10 trusts, all report using NEWS in all or part of the trust 8 report using NEWS across all parts of the organisation 2 trusts report using NEWS in specific pathways only; both organisations identified sepsis as a the pathways for which NEWS is used 90% of the organisations record NEWS on the patient care record 56% of organisations answering the question use electronic systems, 22% a mix of paper and electronic systems and 22% use paper based systems only to calculate and record NEWS. However, of the 9 organiastions answergin the follow up question only 2 report the score being calculated automatically. 70% of organisations report using NEWS to guide decisions relating to conveyance; in response to the follow up question: 4 cited a aggregate NEWS score of 5 or more to trigger transfer to secondary care 1 cited an aggregate NEWS score or 3 or more to trigger transfer to secondary care 5 identified ‘other’ triggers which included “NEWS as a component of the Paramedic Pathfinder decision support tool’ and ‘One red flag or aggregate score of 5 or more in partnership with holistic assessment and not in isolation’ 70% of organisations reported using NEWS as a trigger to make a pre-hospital alert There was a mix of approaches to ‘handover’ of NEWS scores; 30% verbally/on paper, 30% electronically, 30% mix of verbal and electronic and 10% on triage tag.

National summary

National detail

National detail

Local detail

Thank you Thanks to all trusts for completing the survey If you have any questions or queries then please send them to local.contact@ahsn.net If you have any specific queries with regard to the data or would like to request any further analysis please contact psmu.improvement@nhs.net