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Background: The Paediatric Early Warning Score (PEWS) is a scoring tool that was developed in the early 2000s in England and modified for Norwegian conditions in 2011. The tool quantifies the severity of children’s clinical condition, regardless of diagnosis, and identifies children between 0 and 18 years of age who are at risk of clinical deterioration. PEWS is regarded as a useful tool for recognising at-risk patients, but research on user experiences with PEWS is limited. Purpose: To describe the experiences of nurses and doctors with PEWS. We describe these experiences in terms of whether the tool contributes to a systematic approach to monitoring and better communication, as well as whether the tool is applicable to the user. In addition, we investigate whether PEWS is used according to established guidelines and whether different hospitals or professional groups have different experiences with the tool. Method: We used a quantitative method with a descriptive cross-sectional design. We developed our own questionnaire to survey the user experiences of 172 healthcare professionals at three Norwegian hospitals, and performed descriptive analyses with non-parametric rank-sum tests (Kruskal-Wallis and Mann-Whitney-Wilcoxon). Results: There is general agreement among the healthcare professionals that PEWS promotes a systematic approach to monitoring and better communication and that PEWS is a user-friendly tool. The healthcare professionals at one hospital agreed significantly more often that they use PEWS according to established guidelines, as compared with the other hospitals. Conclusion: The healthcare professionals report positive experiences with PEWS, but the study shows that they use the guidelines in very different ways.

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