New Ideas for Old News: What Impact Can Mobile Gaming Have on the Sepsis Epidemic?

By: Kambria H. Evans, MEd, program officer, Quality and Organizational Improvement, Department of Medicine, Stanford University School of Medicine As a baby in the 1980s, I got very ill. When my condition worsened instead of improved, my mother found herself desperately pleading with ER nurses that I be admitted. My family would soon learn I was severely septic. Relatives came to the hospital to say good-bye. I lost almost a third of my body weight, my skin tone turned grey, and parts of my head were shaven to allow tubes to disappear into my small skull. While I don’t consciously remember this, it shaped my identity each time my mother, still visibly upset, told me the story. However, I’ve learned that my story is not unique. In 2012, 12-year-old Rory Staunton’s sepsis diagnosis was also delayed, and when he returned to the ER, also in severe septic shock, it was too late to save him in the ICU. Rory’s story was highly publicized in the New York Times, but sepsis isn’t a new story. Sepsis is everywhere. Each year, more than a million people in the United States will develop severe sepsis, and up to half of those people will die. Think about that for a moment: That’s the entire population of Cincinnati, Ohio. That’s more than all annual U.S. deaths from prostate cancer, breast cancer, and AIDS combined. How is it possible that, even after the 30 years of medical evolution since I was septic in the ICU, delayed sepsis diagnoses are still this common? ...
Source: Academic Medicine Blog - Category: Universities & Medical Training Authors: Tags: Featured Guest Perspective gaming sepsis Stanford technology in medicine Source Type: blogs