Five members of staff at The Orthopaedic Hospital have been recognised as Sepsis Heroes by The UK Sepsis Trust.

Staff nurses Nia Griffiths and Bronwen Ryan, Midlands Centre for Spinal Injuries Sister Genevieve Chavez, outreach Sister Donna Jones and Dr Rhiannon Worrall have all been awarded with the accolade at the Oswestry-based hospital.

Sepsis is when the body injures its own tissues and organs as a response to infection. It can be triggered by any infection, but most commonly happens in response to bacterial infections of the lungs, skin and soft issues, abdominal organs or urinary tract.

Around 44,000 people lose their lives to sepsis every year so an international campaign was launched to raise awareness of the dangers and the importance of taking swift action.

All the heroes recognised symptoms of sepsis within their patients, and speedily responded resulting in the patients surviving sepsis.

Nia acted when her patient developed a sudden high fever and signs of a urinary infection. The patient’s condition was rapidly declining, so she escalated them for an urgent medical review. From this, urinary sepsis was identified.

Bronwen quickly escalated a patient with a fever and known urine infection to the Outreach Team. After receiving a handover from Bronwen, Donna utilised the ‘red flag’ screening tool and notified the medic on-call.

Genevieve and Dr Worrall used the Sepsis 6 process to identify sepsis in the patient. Due to the complexity of the case they sourced support from senior clinicians to prevent the patient’s condition further declining.

Nicki Bellinger, deputy director of nursing, said: “All our heroes did a fantastic job of detecting that the patients may have sepsis.

“These staff members responded to a life threatening condition in its early stages which has resulted in better eventual outcomes for the patients.”

“I am very proud of them, and they should be proud of themselves.”

Dr Ron Daniels BEM, chief executive of the UK Sepsis Trust said: “It’s exactly this kind of swift recognition and treatment of sepsis that will help save thousands of lives in the UK.

“We need the resources to equip all healthcare professionals across the NHS to identify sepsis as quickly as possible and put the current postcode lottery behind us.

“Clinicians and members of the public all over the country should be empowered to ‘Just Ask: “could it be sepsis?”.”