Critical Care Medicine is the multiprofessional healthcare specialty that cares for patients with acute, life-threatening illness or injury. We might all experience critical illness, not only as patients, but as family members or friends of those who are critically ill.
Furthermore, Critical Care Medicine extend beyond the confounds of a physical space, to a scene of an accident, in emergency medical services, and in the operating rooms or wards, while these early minutes and hours of critical interventions make a big difference in patient outcomes.
Critical care is provided by interprofessional teams of highly experienced and professional physicians, critical care nurses, respiratory therapists, clinical pharmacists, clinical nutritionists, perfusionists, speech and language pathologist and other allied health professionals who use their unique expertise, ability to interpret important therapeutic information, access to highly sophisticated equipment and the services of support personnel to provide care that leads to the best outcome for the patient.
While the continuum of critical care begins at the time of illness or injury, it continues throughout the patient's hospitalization, treatment, and subsequent recovery and beyond discharge from the ICU. While Critical Care Medicine as we know it today is considered a very young specialty, there are some historical recognitions of acute and life-threatening illness that required to group patients in specific location is any hospital.
From observation beds next to nursing stations, to specialized post-surgical units looking after complex surgical interventions in USA in the early 20th century or during World War II and formation of shock wards.
