Dear HIFA colleagues,
I was talking to a friend yesterday in the local pub. He's a first responder (not on duty at the time!) - he gets called to any local emergencies and though not a doctor or nurse, he is trained to provide immediate assessment and treatment while awaiting further professional help such as an ambulace crew. He was telling me about a case who had a "NEWS2 score of 7". I said "NEWS2, that's news to me!". Apparently, it's a nationwide tool in the UK National Health Service that all staff, doctors and nurses are familiar with, introduced in 2012 (I stopped working as a clinician long before then). The tool is based on six clinical measurements, including pulse, blood pressure and oxygen saturation.
This made me wonder if the tool has been adopted outside the UK, and particularly in low- and middle-income countries. Which led me to learn there are several different tools, each with their own strengths and weaknesses.
One of the weaknesses of the NEWS2 tool is that it requires pulse oximetry to measure oxygen saturation, and this may not be available in low-resource settings.
I would like to invite you to tell us what tool you use to assess the general severity of a patient's medical condition. And how do different countries select which tool would be best for them? Does WHO provide any guidance? Is there potential for more standardisation?
Best wishes, Neil
HIFA profile: Neil Pakenham-Walsh is coordinator of HIFA (Healthcare Information For All), a global health community that brings all stakeholders together around the shared goal of universal access to reliable healthcare information. HIFA has 20,000 members in 180 countries, interacting in four languages and representing all parts of the global evidence ecosystem. HIFA is administered by Global Healthcare Information Network, a UK-based nonprofit in official relations with the World Health Organization. Email: neil@hifa.org