Introduction: Respiratory diseases (RD) can lead to life-threatening condition in children. It must be timely identified and appropriately addressed. RD can be recognized by the assessment of respiratory effort, breathing efficiency and the systemic involvement that manifests trough changes in pulse, respiratory rate, skin properties, and the level of consciousness.

Background: Conventionally used visual or numeric tools for RD assessment are not appropriate in infants and toddlers since they cannot directly participate. Most often, multiple simultaneously assessed indicators are used. Connecting the physiological measurements with nurses? observations enables the identification of alterations in disease courses.

Aims and methods: The purpose of our work was to determine the reliability of the in house developed nurse RD scale?s (named the ?ODO scale?) association with heart rate (HR), respiration rate (RR), oxygen saturation (SpO2) and body temperature (BT) in infants and toddlers with RD. Data were collected through retrospective charts? review.

Results: The results confirmed the association of RR, HR, SpO2 and BT with the ODO scale gradeings (P < 0.01 for all four aforementioned parameters).

Conclusions: The ?in house? ODO respiratory distress scale has been shown to reliably identify children with pronounced RD and thus importantly contributed to objective patients? monitoring.