What began as a graduate school paper for April Lassen has resulted in a medical advance for Utah Valley Regional Medical Center - and possibly the nation.
Lassen, in conjunction with pediatrician Dr. Moreno Robins and neonatology director Dr. Stephen Minton, created a standardized program for diagnosing and treating sepsis, a serious bacterial infection in the bloodstream in newborns.Lassen was named the Clinical Nurse of the Year by the Utah Hospital Association.
"It (sepsis) can be overwhelming in the newborn and there's a high mortality rate," Lassen said.
Lassen's program is a "ruling out" method. For example, if the mother has a high temperature or strep throat, that is an indicator that the infant may have sepsis.
If the mother or baby shows two or more signs of risk factors, then a series of four lab tests is performed. These tests give a quick indication of the infant's health. The old method of testing for sepsis requires a blood culture that takes 24 hours to process. That may be too late to save the newborn's life.
If the lab tests show continued risk factors then even more tests are administered, including antibiotics, increased nursing care and frequent vital-sign checks.
These tests are repeated in 24 hours.
What the process does is eliminate unnecessary care and costs, Lassen said.
Hospitals have traditionally overtreated potential sepsis-infected newborns because of the 24-hour wait for accuracy. Rather than wait for test results, doctors have treated for sepsis without knowing for sure if the child has the infection.
Under the new program, if infants don't exhibit risk signs, they aren't treated. No infants have returned to the hospital with sepsis after being released, Lassen said.
Lassen's standardized program eliminates the excessive treatment and therefore saves money. During the program's three-month pilot program at Utah Valley, $45,000 was saved. That projects to a possible $200,000 worth of savings in a year, she said.
Utah Valley used to treat approximately 12 percent of its infants for sepsis; that has been reduced to 4 percent with the new program.
The National Institutes of Health and the National Center for Nursing Research have shown interest in spreading the program on a national basis, Lassen said.
Minton will document the procedure in a medical journal.
Lassen began the project as a change paper for her graduate class at Brigham Young University. She wanted to make a difference with her work but never realized the impact her studies would have, Lassen said.