Performance of the Simple Clinical Score (SCS) and the Rapid Emergency Medicine Score (REMS) to predict severity level and mortality rate among patients with sepsis in the emergency department

Nurses play a key role as the first line of service for patients with medical conditions and injuries in the emergency department (ED), which includes assessing patients for sepsis. The researchers evaluated tools to examine the performance of the Simple Clinical Score (SCS) and the Rapid Emergency Medicine Score (REMS) to predict sepsis severity and mortality among sepsis patients in the ED. A retrospective survey was performed, selecting participants by using a purposive sampling method, and including the medical records of all patients diagnosed with sepsis admitted to the ED at Singburi Hospital, Thailand. Data were analysed using the ROC curve and the Area Under Curve (AUC) to calculate the accuracy of each patient's mortality prediction. A total of 225 patients diagnosed with sepsis was identified, with a mortality rate of 59.11% after admission to the medical service and intensive care unit. The AUC analysis showed that the accuracy of the model generated from the REMS (88.6%) was higher than that of the SCS (76.7%). The authors also re-commend that key variables identified in this research should be used to develop screening and assessment tools for sepsis in the context of the ED. (C) 2021 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of College of Emergency Nursing Australasia.