News
Patient Risk Assessment Algorithm
(PRAA) Edutainment Scenario
Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen University Hospitals NHS Trust/University of Liverpool
Professor Martin Leuwer, Professor and Chair of Anaesthesia (The University of Liverpool; honorary contract with Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen University Hospitals NHS Trust), Jan Leuwer, Designer and New Media Artist.
A thorough check of a patient’s state of health, which is repeated at regular intervals, is fundamental to providing optimum in-patient health care.
These checks are designed to identify patient deterioration and initiate a suitable response by a healthcare professional. The observations are frequently the responsibility of junior staff (young and inexperienced postgraduate trainees, nurses and paramedics), which can result in crucial mistakes in the patient risk assessment and
a reduction in the quality of care received by the patient.
The gold-standard approach to improving assessment
accuracy is high-quality medical education, including
simulations to mimic ‘real life’ situations. Unfortunately, the number of clinical skills training centres providing simulation training is limited, because the logistics and the equipment are expensive.
The PRAA multimedia edutainment package uses a
virtual scenario simulating a clinical environment, to
provide healthcare professionals with more cost-effective and accessible teaching in patient risk assessment. The package enables the user to realistically interact with a virtual patient. Its easy-to-use and entertaining nature encourages the user to understand the problem, and facilitates effective and consistent patient risk assessment.
Image (top right): Jan Leuwer (Designer and New Media Artist), Dr Martin Leuwer (Professor and Chair of Anaesthesia, The University of Liverpool; honorary contract with Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen University Hospitals NHS Trust) and Sir David Henshaw (Chair, NHS North West).
Image (bottom right): Dr Martin Leuwer (Professor and Chair of Anaesthesia, The University of Liverpool; honorary contract with Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen University Hospitals NHS Trust) and Jan Leuwer (Designer and New Media Artist).