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Vital Signs Essay

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Do observations of vital signs really indicate how sick a child is? - Would this be an effective triage tool?

Introduction
This assignment will look at papers that are relevant to the research question posed; it will consider their validity, scope of relevance and whether further research may be needed either to answer the question or to clarify aspects of research already completed.

Traditionally emphasis is placed on vital sign recording to indicate the severity of an illness, and with the advent of Paediatric Early or Advanced Warning Score systems (PEWS / PAWS) ( Monaghan 2005) there is now widespread use of these tools in the assessment of improving or worsening of the presenting illness. Tucker et al (2009) found PEWS were a …show more content…

Critical appraisal of literature
Although literature is abundant on the assessment of vital signs or paediatric early warning Scores (PEWS) in children most recent studies look at their effectiveness in relation to infection (Bachur et al 2001, Brent et al 2011, Coghill and Simkiss 2011, Craig et al 2010, Opiyou and English 2011, Thompson et al 2008, Thompson et al 2009 and van den Bruel 2005) these studies also tend to focus on either those infants under three months or children between three months and sixteen years. Also there are many studies that relate their effectiveness in detecting Paediatric Intensive Care admission for already hospitalised children (Edgell et al 2008, Akre et al 2010, Edwards et al 2008 and Duncan et al 2006)
Twelve articles were considered of which the majority were quantitative, but one was a small group qualitative study using semi structured interviews by van den Bruel et al (2005). A study by Thompson et al (2008) did use a questionnaire to elicit the data and information that was needed using Fishers exact test to determine statistical significance between variable within the categories used.
I found one article relating to triage, on reading this found that the title did not entirely correspond with its content, although this could have been my perception of the

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