Patient and family-initiated escalation of care: a qualitative systematic review protocol (April 2019)

Summary

Despite the introduction of rapid response systems and early warning scores, clinical deterioration that is not recognised or responded to early enough prevails in acute care areas. One intervention that aims to address this issue and that is gaining increased attention is patient-and family-initiated escalation of care schemes. Existing systematic review evidence to date has tended to focus on identifying the impact or effectiveness of these schemes in practice. However, they have not tended to focus on qualitative evidence to consider the experience of deterioration and the factors that may promote or hinder engagement with these schemes in the practice setting.

The aim of this review, published in Systemic Reviews, is to explore patients’, relatives’ and healthcare professionals’ experiences of deterioration and their perceptions of the barriers or facilitators to patient and family-initiated escalation of care in acute adult hospital wards.