Effect of a multifaceted intervention on documentation of vital signs and staff communication regarding deteriorating paediatric patients.

Aim: To evaluate the impact of newly designed Paediatric Early Warning Scores and an accompanying education package, COMPASS, on the frequency of documentation of vital signs and communication between health professionals and associated medical review in deteriorating paediatric patients.

Methods: One thousand fifty-nine patients in the pre-intervention phase and 899 in the post-intervention phase were studied. The daily frequency of documentation of vital sign measurement, incidence of health professional communication and related medical reviews following clinical deterioration of a random subgroup of 262 pre-intervention and 221 post-intervention patients were studied in detail.