Recognising and responding to acute deterioration in adult patients

See all modules

Serious adverse events in hospitalised patients, including medical emergencies and mental health complications, such as suicide, violence, and aggression, are often preceded by abnormal clinical observations.

Early identification of these abnormalities allows for a prompt and effective medical response that can improve outcomes, lessen the complexity of interventions required to stabilise the patient, and prevent in-hospital mortality.

All acute care settings in Australia must maintain effective systems for recognising and responding to acute deterioration.

In particular, nurses are responsible for recognising patients who are unwell, escalating care, supporting an appropriate medical response, and communicating the plan of care with patients, carers, and families.

The rich text element allows you to create and format headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, images, and video all in one place instead of having to add and format them individually. Just double-click and easily create content.

Static and dynamic content editing

A rich text element can be used with static or dynamic content. For static content, just drop it into any page and begin editing. For dynamic content, add a rich text field to any collection and then connect a rich text element to that field in the settings panel. Voila!

How to customize formatting for each rich text

Headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, figures, images, and figure captions can all be styled after a class is added to the rich text element using the "When inside of" nested selector system.

At the end of this module participants will be able to:

Describe the three steps to recognising and responding to acute deterioration: 1. Detecting and recognising acute deterioration; 2. Escalating care, and 3. Responding to acute deterioration.
Understand the role of vital signs monitoring and documentation in identifying patients who are deteriorating.
Identify early warning signs to indicate changes in an individual’s mental state.
Identify the parameters and indicators used to initiate an escalation of care.
Recognise worry and concern by clinicians, patients, families, and carers as an essential indicator of acute deterioration.
Describe a tiered escalation protocol and recommendations for caring for patients in the ‘yellow zone’, ‘red zone’, and those experiencing a medical emergency.
Understand how an appropriate response to acute deterioration is provided through timely access to care, advanced life support, and referral to mental health services or specialised health services, as appropriate.
Describe the importance of communicating the plan of care with clinicians, patients, carers, and families.
Identify key features of documentation following recognition and response to an acute deterioration.

At the end of this module participants will be able to: