Sepsis guides and tools for health professionals
Resources – including guidance and tools – designed to support the early recognition and treatment of sepsis.
Clinical Guide to Sepsis Management in New Zealand
This clinical guide covers the recognition, diagnosis and early management of sepsis. It is for health care professionals working in primary, secondary and tertiary care. People who have experienced sepsis and their family/whānau can use it as a care standard. This guide:
- is to help professionals and patients make decisions about the most appropriate treatment and care for specific clinical circumstances
- can be used to develop standards to assess the clinical practice of individual health professionals and organisations
- can support the education and training of health professionals and others
- can improve communication between patients and health professionals.
Clinical governance for sepsis
Raise the Flag: Sepsis quality improvement: Clinical governance for sepsis supports the effective implementation and long-term sustainability of the national sepsis improvement package. It includes a summary of the clinical governance framework to help health care professionals deliver and embed the national sepsis pathway.
National sepsis pathways for treating adult, paediatric and maternity patients
The sepsis pathways are endorsed by Health New Zealand | Te Whatu Ora.
Hospital sepsis guides and pathways
Pre-hospital community sepsis pathways
Use these templates to:
- screen patients for sepsis and identify the level of risk
- treat patients identified as having a high-risk of sepsis.
Further reading
A range of evidence-gathering activities have informed the development of the national sepsis quality improvement package, including national and international literature scoping reviews, analysis of sepsis-related adverse events, and a stocktake of sepsis management across New Zealand.
Together, this work identified harm associated with sepsis, variation in current practice, and clear opportunities for system-level improvement.
Key findings and reports from this scoping phase are outlined below.
Literature scoping review by Callan Attwell
HQSC Sepsis Quality Improvement Scoping Review 2023 (PDF 1 MB)
Sepsis adverse event thematic analysis
Sepsis scoping summary report
Sepsis quality improvement programme scoping summary (PDF 1.2MB)
Stocktake of sepsis management in New Zealand
Stocktake of sepsis management in Aotearoa New Zealand (PDF 1.5 MB)
Published: 9 Sep 2025
Modified: 22 Jan 2026
