The following document is a draft for the general audience paper. This draft was effective because it had enough information to be positively critiqued. The worksheet posted afterwards showed the comments made on the draft by two of my classmates. The draft was not a complete paper but only had the first two paragraphs. However, those two paragraphs had sufficient material for my peer editors to give me feedback on whether the paper was moving in the right direction.

Sepsis: A Common Cause of Death in Hospitals
When hearing the word “sepsis” many people will not register its meaning. However, sepsis is said to annually affect 1.7 million adults in the US (Rhee et al., 2019), making sepsis a health issue that should be talked about more often. So, what is sepsis? According to the CDC, sepsis is an extreme reaction the body has in response to the presence of any infection throughout your body. What sepsis does is damage body tissue, organ failure, and sometimes even death. The research performed by Dr. Chanu Rhee and colleagues was in an effort to determine how common sepsis was, what causes it, and how it is associated with mortality. Out of the 1.7 million people who are affected by sepsis more than 250,000 people die. Looking at the “bigger picture” only 14.7% of people with sepsis die, but individually 250,000 people dying annually due to a bodily reaction which seems to be preventable is alarming! What is essentially perpetuating sepsis is the lack of knowledge people have of it, which prohibits them from accurately recognizing that they or a family member is either on a decline into sepsis or already have sepsis. In order to prevent a continuation, or worse an increase, in mortality due to sepsis, it would be helpful to identify the signs and symptoms early on so that it may be treated before things get “out of hand”.
In order to be able to accurately diagnose sepsis or pre-existing infection early on, one has to know what causes infection, which leads to sepsis, who is most likely to get infections and sepsis, and what are the signs and symptoms. Infections are caused by any germs or bacteria entering into the body, and once this infection has progressed and been left untreated, then sepsis can develop. Although sepsis is most common in people who are over 65 years old or under 1 year old, people who have weakened immune systems, and people who have any chronic medical conditions- such as diabetes, lung disease, cancer, and kidney disease- anyone who has been in a hospital, especially after undergoing surgery, is at risk (CDC, 2018). If you or a loved one meets any of the “high risk” characteristics, then it is crucial that the signs and symptoms can be recognized- an extremely high, or rapidly increasing, heart rate, fever, shivering, feeling cold, constant confusion, shortness of breath, clammy skin, and/or extreme pain (CDC, 2018). The earliest these signs are identified, then the better the chances seem for a doctor to be able to treat and hopefully cease the sepsis.