using avpu in ews

What does ' ews' mean?

so if the best response is the patient reacting to a painful stimlus like a needle even if it is limited, then i am right and that is a pain response and they are not unresponsive.

i did have a very good mentor but this may become a learning diary often in practice i react to the current needs and go on what i think is best running it by a staff nurse if possible.

the EWS was as i said run by the SpR.

EWS Early warning score design to monitor declining patient and improve outcome by promoting early interventions. it assigns a number to abnormal observations and ours include RR, HP, SBP, Temp, Urine output, and as a said AVPU. is a patient scores higher than 3 H.O/S.H.O get informed Greater than 5 is a SpR

obs chart include pain and nausea scoring. these are now even

coloured in discreet section green to red when charting each value.

that's exactly right Ayla

thanks sometimes i just check with others that what think/plan to do is what they would as well, which most mentor have agreed is normal and good practice in nursing.

so are the brits moving away from spelling things out and going down the american road of shortening everything with initials? i understood most of what you were saying but some initials in one particular place dont neccessarily match up with anothers. for example we have a pccu, a cvicu and ccu, we dont have hdu or scbu. but we do have pacu and nicu, oh and a tele floor,,,,,,,,see what i mean? i like the british way of spelling out everything so that mistakes are not made, there are so many acronyms and abreviations over here, that mistakes are made with them.

yes it seems to be getting more confsing over here - everything is reduced to initials which has caused confusion - for instance i think of ccu as coronary care unit but otheres will writ it and mean critical care.

in my trust we have mdcu, hac, rac, gpau, apcu, wdu, fdu as well as the usual ccu, itu, mau and sau - i'm sure i'ver missed some out but these are the ones i juggle with daily.

at my trust we have the mews - modified, ews - very confusing!

so are the brits moving away from spelling things out and going down the american road of shortening everything with initials? i understood most of what you were saying but some initials in one particular place dont neccessarily match up with anothers. for example we have a pccu, a cvicu and ccu, we dont have hdu or scbu. but we do have pacu and nicu, oh and a tele floor,,,,,,,,see what i mean? i like the british way of spelling out everything so that mistakes are not made, there are so many acronyms and abreviations over here, that mistakes are made with them.

We have Mews too - makes me think of cats personally! Most nurses don't use it properly anyway & I also find that it doesn't highlight things I think it should!

AVPU is easy though - if you're not awake & not verbally responding your in the "poo"(pu) & need further assessment! It's if you're in the "PU" that you then go on to look closer & use GCS etc. It's just a shortened, quick assessment to highlight if your patient is in real trouble or not.

For the interest of those who might not know here's how the acronym is broken down:

A - Alert - fully awake, though not necessarily orientated

V - Voice - patient makes some kind of verbal response

P - Pain - patient responds to painful stimulus

U - Unresponsive - unconcious

To be honest I'm completely lost with all these abbreviations!Things have moved on a good bit since my HDU days and reading Ayla's post was like a foreign language!

i try not to abbreviate however it becomes so common from practie

each clinical area has its own set of them, and i end up picking them up.

when wtriting in patient notes we reored the ews score why it s raised and use abbreviations for whatever value heart rate hr etc.

our new obs form can be modified but the docs don't probaly as its the h.o. doing most of the work.

there are a number of extra abreviated units in my home trust most are the norm, itu, mhdu. shdu, nhdu, scbu, rhdu, etc

abbreviations are the way of it over here, but any american or non brit nurse reading your post would not have a clue what you are talking about. i even had to understand it and my command of the english language is good.

I got lost on Jane's abbreviations big time!! Lucky for me the most we have is patients who we class as being HDU - I can cope with that one!!

I liked the "hot tool" we used in the last trust I worked in (about the only thing I liked ) It was simple, easy to follw & gave clear directions as to what the next step was. Every nurse was issued with a small, credit card sized, laminated version to keep with them. It was a really good idea & was done in conjunction with a really active critical care outreach team. It truly was great & I'm sure it must have made a difference to intensive care admission rates.