New emergency department screening tool supports early sepsis detection
UK HealthCare
Lexington, Kentucky
Patrick Grace, M.D., assistant chief medical officer for the UK Albert B. Chandler Hospital, and Victoria Camenisch, a quality improvement clinical facilitator nurse and the lead facilitator for UK HealthCare’s sepsis task force, launched a sepsis screening protocol for patients arriving at the emergency department. Photo courtesy of Alexis Baker, University of Kentucky Creative Services.
UK HealthCare’s Albert B. Chandler Hospital has introduced a new emergency department screening protocol to help clinicians identify and treat sepsis sooner. Early treatment of the condition, which affects 1.7 million adults and more than 18,000 children in the United States each year, offers patients the best chance of survival.
The screening is built into routine assessments that are completed soon after a patient arrives at the ED. It prompts nurses to look for signs of infection and evaluate heart rate, blood pressure, temperature and respiratory rate. Patients who screen positive are flagged for next steps, such as notifying a physician, ordering lab work and blood cultures, and administering antibiotics, IV fluids or other treatment.
The initiative is part of the hospital’s broader effort to improve sepsis care in the emergency department, which also includes physician workflow improvements, prebuilt communication tools for nurses and physicians, and visual sepsis indicators on the department tracking board to support timely clinical decision-making.
Hospital leaders say the screening process has become a routine part of ED operations since it launched in March 2026, and they have observed improvements on national sepsis care measures. The hospital hopes to expand the program beyond the emergency department by strengthening and standardizing sepsis care across inpatient settings with a continued focus on early recognition and intervention.