How patient awareness can beat sepsis

October and November have been a season of numerous conferences in emergency medicine in the UK, and internationally. I had the chance to attend the Sepsis Unplugged conference held in Brighton by the UK Sepsis Trust, aiming for speedy recognition and treatment of sepsis to reduce mortality. A killer of 44000 people per year in the UK, sepsis is still largely unknown to the wider population. The condition recently surfaced in the news however, after a young mother-of-two died of sepsis following a “minor scrape on her hands while gardening”.

From the many talks and interactive sessions at the conference, what consistently came across was the variety of healthcare professionals involved in shaping paramedicine. Patients' stories of their battle with sepsis made the event even more insightful. One such story of sepsis patient Tom Ray was also released as a film called ‘Starfish’ this year – a welcome human touch to the statistics presented by healthcare professionals.