Patient and Family initiated escalation of care scheme to detect and refer patient deterioration in hospital. UK Critical Care Research Forum (UKCCRF), Belfast: QUB, 7-8th June 2018.

Despite rapid response schemes, delayed recognition and response to acute deterioration remains problematic. Families are increasingly recognised as important in detecting and referring patient deterioration (1-3). A number of family-initiated schemes have shown positive evaluations in picking up patient deterioration missed by staff and have been highly valued by patients and families (4-7). Recent systematic reviews reported these schemes were developed with little to no patient and family involvement and were largely implemented as quality improvement interventions without robust testing (8,9). Given the positive signal, there would be benefit in co-designing and testing a family-initiated scheme in a robust manner.