Icus Case Study

Intensive Care Units (ICUs) have undergone an impressive improvement and expansion over the last 50 years. Evidence strongly supports that the presence of a specialized critical care team which is directed by a dedicated intensivist physician as a leader reduce patients’ mortality and morbidity.1,2 High quality care to critically ill patients also requires the adoption of a 24/7 intensivist model of critical care and the appropriate training, credentialing, and dedicating to critical care of all intensivists, regardless of their base specialty. I addition, as technology evolved to allow for development of increasingly intricate and sophisticated adjuncts to care, there has been recognition of the importance of physician availability and continuity of care as key factors in improving patient outcomes. Furthermore, guidelines and protocols have been established to ensure quality improvement.
Initially, anesthetists were responsible for the planning, administration, and supervision of ICUs [2]. However, most patients requiring intensive care suffered from hemorrhagic or septic shock, acute renal failure, or acute respiratory distress syndrome. Because general surgeons had the expertise to perform fluid resuscitation, blood transfusion, central venous and pulmonary artery catheter
The advantages of surgical involvement in the ICUs include the following: (1) surgical diseases are already known by the critical care surgeon; (2) basic surgical principles are similar among operating and critical care surgeons; (3) educational programs can be developed for better surgical education within the basic residency and surgical critical care programs; and (4) surgical patients benefit from a knowledgeable and available provider of critical care. Surgeons speaking to surgeons have a better chance of communicating about their patients' problems because of their common