Anaesthesia | Recognition of the critically ill patient | Critical Care Outreach Services

Critical Care Outreach Services
Session Overview
Description
This session describes the role and implementation of critical care outreach services, as well as other relevant issues.

Learning Objectives
By the end of this session you will be able to:

• Describe methods used to identify the 'at risk' patient
• Explain how an outreach team can use this information
• Explain how an outreach team may improve care of the critically ill

Patients can become critically ill in any part of a hospital. Critical care outreach services (CCOS) should promptly identify these patients as they deteriorate and then optimize their treatments, by either modifying ward care or facilitating transfer to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU).

The existence of critical care outreach teams is not uniform across UK Trusts so local approaches will vary considerably.

This session explores the merits of, and the problems associated with, a critical care outreach programme. The session covers the following topics:

• An overview of outreach services and team structure
• Definitions and objectives of outreach services
• Roles of an outreach team, including early recognition of a critically-ill patient, support following discharge from ICU and support following discharge from hospital
• The role of training and education in outreach services