ICU learning pathway | Critical Care Outreach Services

Critical Care Outreach Services
Session Overview
Description
This session will ensure you understand the role and implementation of, as well as other issues involved in, critical care outreach services.

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

• Describe methods used to identify the 'at risk' patient
• State how an outreach team can use this information
• Specify 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).

That said, the existence of critical care outreach teams is not uniform across UK Trusts so local approaches will vary considerably.

This session will explore the merits of, and the problems associated with, a critical care outreach programme. The session will cover 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