How To Assess a Deteriorating / Critically Ill Patient (ABCDE Assessment)

So, knowing the patient’s history and diagnosis is useful in helping you make informed decisions about the patient’s ongoing care (Smith 2003).

Response to the deteriorating/ critically ill patient should be locally agreed upon within each hospital (Centre for Clinical Practice 2019) and will most likely include a process for assessing the deteriorating patient. But, if there is any concern that the patient is critically ill and deteriorating to a possible cardiac arrest, then a cardiac arrest call should be put out immediately (Smith & Pitcher 2015).

This article will discuss how to assess a deteriorating /critically ill patient using the ABCDE (airway, breathing, circulation, disability and exposure) systematic approach.

The ABCDE approach is intended as a rapid bedside assessment of a deteriorating/ critically ill patient, and it is designed to provide the initial management of life-threatening conditions in order of priority, using a structured method to keep the patient alive and to achieve the first steps to improvement, rather than making a definitive diagnosis (Smith 2003).