This Wednesday, 7th June at 07:00, CHFT will be transitioning from our current Paediatric Advanced Warning Score (PAWS) to the National Paediatric Early Warning Score (NPEWS) in line with NHS England guidance.
The introduction of NPEWS represents an important step in strengthening the recognition and response to deterioration in children and young people. A standardised national approach will support improved patient safety, enable consistent care across organisations, and enhance communication between clinical teams.
Within Electronic Patient Records (EPR), a revised Vital Signs view and new graphing component will be implemented to support NPEWS, enabling clearer visualisation of observations and early warning scores to aid clinical decision-making.
NERVECENTRE - As a temporary measure all paediatric observations for NPEWS will be documented within EPR rather than Nervecentre until the full integration solution is live in the near future.
What this means for colleagues
- A single, standardised scoring system will replace the current local PAWS approach
- Improved consistency in escalation and clinical decision-making
- Alignment with national best practice and safety recommendations
- Updates to documentation, processes, and where applicable, digital system
Benefits for patients and services
- Earlier recognition of clinical deterioration
- More timely and appropriate escalation of care
- Improved safety and quality of care across the patient pathway
- Better support for cross-organisational working and transfers of care
Next steps
- Updated guidance and resources will be made available via the Trust intranet
- Go-live plans and support arrangements will be communicated in advance
Training
- An NPEWS training video is available ahead of go-live to ensure familiarity with the updated processes.
- Additionally, a dedicated NPEWS e-learning module is available in ESR for all relevant clinical staff and should be completed ahead of go-live to ensure familiarity with the updated processes.
All relevant EPR Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) have been updated to reflect NPEWS changes and are available on the EPR SOP Repository. Please use the following links to access Paediatric Vital Signs CHB_PAEDS_029 SOP and Changing the EWS Scale to PEWS if on different EWS scale in error CHB_PAEDS_093 SOP.
We would like to thank colleagues for their continued commitment to improving patient safety and supporting this important change. Further information will follow as we progress towards implementation.