Critical Care
What is Critical Care / Intensive Care?
Critical care medicine is a medical specialty that delivers services for critically or seriously ill patients. Critical care medicine is also said to be intensive care medicine.
An intensive care unit or critical care unit of a hospital is composed of a multi-professional team that takes care of patients who suffer from life-threatening conditions. An intensive care unit team includes highly trained doctors, nurses, physiotherapists, pharmacists, dieticians,s and respiratory therapists.
Who requires critical care?
Any illness which puts life at immediate risk of death, even for a short duration, requires intensive care; such as
- Stroke (paralysis), multiple seizures
- Severe Infection, like; as pneumonia, meningitis, blood infection
- Patients with lung problems that need a ventilator or a BiPAP to breath
- Had a major accident – polytrauma, brain trauma
- Heart failure, heart attack
- Liver failure
- Kidney failure
- Major surgery for post-surgery care
- High-risk pregnancies – Eclampsia, Postpartum hemorrhage
- Burns
- Poisoning
Who is an intensivist?
An intensivist (also known as a Critical Care Specialist) is a doctor with subspecialty training after post-graduation in critical care. An intensivist directs the care of critically ill and injured patients and works in collaboration with other health care professionals necessary for the care of patients in critical care units.
How long can a patient expect to stay in an ICU?
The length of stay of a patient in intensive care depends on a patient’s condition and varies from several hours to several weeks, sometimes several months.
It is also a specialty that is long-lasting for many patients who will stay for a number of days, even weeks, in our services – the time needed for the damage to the organs to disappear and for the patient to be transferred to another service, where the level of care is less intensive.
Different phases of care
- A stay in intensive care can last from a few days to several months and is often determined by the improvement of the patient.
- Admission to ICU is often critical: the treatments are immediately “heavy” and intense in order to stabilize the patient as fast as possible.
- After this critical phase, other infectious or other complications can occur, which can worsen the situation.
- According to the evolution of the patient, sedative treatments or any other technical assistance may be started, stopped, and restarted, which can seem like a step back to you.
- Once the patient is stable and deemed fit to be ok with less observation, he is shifted to the general ward or room.
- Feel free to ask the ICU staff any questions you may have about the treatment, techniques, and care that your loved one is receiving.
