Risky Business: Predicting Patient Mortality at a Glance

Abstract

Clinicians are constantly forecasting patient trajectories to make critical point of care decisions intended to influence clinical outcomes. Little is known, however, about how providers interpret mortality risk against validated scoring systems. This research aims to understand how providers forecast mortality specifically for that of patients with sepsis. Defined as life-threatening organ dysfunction caused by a dysregulated host response to infection, sepsis is commonly hard to diagnose, progresses rapidly, and lacks a “gold standard” test. Participants were nurses and doctors from the general medical and surgical floors of six different hospitals. Each was presented with ten different patient cases, categorized into low and high severity sepsis, and were asked about care decisions, along with estimations of mortality risk. The resulting data provides a unique look into the differences of risk forecasting between profession and patient severity.