AN international expert in patient safety is helping staff in Colchester to diagnose and treat sepsis.

Dr Stephen Bolsin, who is on sabbatical leave from Geelong Hospital in Victoria, Australia, is spending three days at Colchester General Hospital, mostly in its Emergency Department (A&E).

He is best known for exposing the Bristol baby heart scandal in the 1990s when, as a new consultant anaesthetist at the Bristol Royal Infirmary, he identified too many babies were dying during heart surgery.

His actions led directly to a major government inquiry, the Kennedy Report, which made wide-ranging recommendations about reform of clinical governance in UK hospitals.

Dr Bolsin has agreed to provide his expertise at no charge to Colchester because he believes all health services should provide the highest quality services within their available resources.

He is working as an external consultant in the role to see what steps can be taken to improve the early recognition and timely treatment of sepsis, an infection which claims more than 35,000 UK lives a year.

Dr Barbara Buckley, managing director of Colchester Hospital University NHS Foundation Trust, said Dr Bolsin's input was also boosting staff morale.

"We are very honoured to have him.

"He has spent a couple of days really looking at what we have been doing - we are on what we are calling an improvement journey.

"We have spent the last year looking at strands of improvement and one of them is patients becoming ill through infection, such as sepsis.

"We know if we pick it up quickly we can treat people and they have a better chance of recovery.

"It is not a particular problem in Colchester but it is something we know we can do better in so we have checked on that - particularly in older people it is very difficult to pick up on the signs of sepsis.

"It is something we want people to have at the front of their minds."

Dr Buckley said if staff followed a national checklist including how well a patient is hydrated and their blood pressure, the infection could be treated with antibiotics and fluids.

Dr Buckley said Dr Bolsin visited the Emergency Department because that is also an area of the hospital where staff have sought to make improvements in the last six months and is also often the first place a patient is met by staff.

Dr Bolsin's suggestions to Colchester included how it records sepsis incidents and how patient information is communicated between staff members.

He will return in three weeks to see how staff are coping.

His actions remain to this day the most important single-handed clinical outcomes improvement brought about in the NHS.

As a result of recommendations from the Kennedy Report, his actions have affected clinical governance in each specialty in every hospital in the NHS.

Dr Bolsin moved to Colchester when he was aged 10 before attending Colchester Royal Grammar School, where he was school captain, and going on to study medicine.

Shortly after qualifying, Dr Bolsin worked briefly at Essex County Hospital, Colchester, in 1979 as a locum in paediatrics and ENT surgery, and has retained a keen interest in the area. He became a consultant anaesthetist in Bristol in 1989.