Pediatric Early Warning System in the Short Stay Unit

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: Pediatric Early Warning Scores were developed as standardized clinical aides for early recognition of clinical deterioration in children. These systems improve situational awareness among professionals. A major concern is the workload increase. After implementation in the Short Stay Unit, we intended to evaluate its effectiveness in our population.METHODS: We reviewed medical records of children admitted to the Short Stay Unit between July 2017 and February 2020. We developed a statistical analysis to evaluate the test performance.RESULTS: One thousand three hundred twenty-three patients were included (median age 3.07 years-old); 5.7% were considered to have clinical deterioration (maximum score median 7.00 vs 2.00) (p<0.001). The area under the ROC curve was 0.947. Defining 4 as cut-off value, the sensitivity is 97.1% (specificity 82.7%).CONCLUSION: This score proved to be a good test for early identification of clinical deterioration in our population.