Some of the Waitaha Canterbury sepsis champions

Te Whatua Ora – Health NZ Waitaha Cantebury launches its RAISE THE FLAG Sepsis Initiative on 13 September 2022 (World Sepsis Day). This quality and patient safety initiative aims to improve recognition and management of sepsis in Canterbury. It focuses initially on adults at Christchurch Hospital, following on from successful work done in Child Health.

We are an interdisciplinary multiservice group aiming to improve recognition and management of sepsis in Waitaha Canterbury.Involved services include Infection Management, ED, ICU, Quality, Hauora Māori and Maternity and we share membership with the Antimicrobial Stewardship and Patient Deterioration programmes.

The initial scope is confined to adults at the Christchurch Hospital campus but the plan is to extend this to other hospitals and the community in time. A new Sepsis Steering Group for Te Whatu Ora – Health NZ Waitaha Canterbury is planned for oversight, consistency and sustainability of this work.

We recognised we could do better for sepsis care and hoped that aligning with the new NZ National Sepsis Action Plan (2021), could help us achieve this.

The messaging will focus on empowering health workers (medical, nursing or allied health) and consumers (family, whānau and friends) to question “Could this be sepsis?” and to escalate concerns appropriately.

Alongside an updated Hospital HealthPathway Sepsis in Adults, we will have a range of educational resources available including hardcopy, online and face-to-face teaching. A new sepsis intranet (PRISM site will help link up the various workstreams and resources.