Sepsis Week

Introducction

Hypothesis:

• We can all improve the care we give to septic patients if we have better knowledge of our own performance.
• It is the intention of this Sepsis Week to develop a core data set that can be used to audit sepsis care in ICU admissions across Europe with a view to raising the standards of care to a level consistent with the Surviving Sepsis Campaign guidelines.

Objectives:

• Improve sepsis care across Europe using an audit tool.
• Describe the regional differences in administered treatments for sepsis
• Describe areas of improvement in sepsis treatment for the future.
• Describe the epidemiology of severe sepsis and septic shock in Europe.

Design

• Observational, multicenter, multinational, cross-sectional research.
• Intervention at unit level.
• Data will be collected during four periods of 1 week in one year.

Setting

All types of ICU attending patients with severe sepsis, including:

• ICUs and intermediate care units.
• Pediatric and adult units.
• Academic and non-academic institutions
• Public and private institutions
• Units will be stratified according a previous survey.
• All European countries (distributed among ESICM and ESPNIC members).