Critical care
High intensity A
s the name suggests, work in intensive care has never been a walk in the park. Caring for the most critically ill patients requires specialist skill and one-to-one attention, as well as the sensitivity to manage relationships with their families. But, for ICUs around the globe, the last year or so has been significantly more intensive than most.
These wards have become a focal point of the Covid- 19 pandemic and a barometer for how well healthcare systems are coping. And while many column inches have been devoted to counting bed spaces, ventilators and PPE, critical care’s most valuable resources – its people – have been courageously getting on with whatever needs to be done.
At the various peaks of the pandemic, ICUs have been likened to battlefields. But doctors and nurses are not soldiers, and nor did they sign up to fight in a war. After more than 12 months of putting their lives on the line, staff have been left feeling wrung out. “The bottom line is that people are depleted and exhausted, and they have been harmed by what’s happened,” says Tim Cook, a consultant in anaesthesia and intensive care medicine at Royal United Hospitals in Bath, south-west England. “The pandemic has really exposed a lot of the underlying issues we have in critical care,” adds Dr Greg Martin, president of the Society of Critical Care Medicine in the US. “Issues around staff stress,
The equipment is the easy part. Beds are an important measure, but ICUs wouldn’t be needed at all if frames and mattresses alone saved lives. Unlike the people working around them, they don’t keep the system from toppling, nor will their shelter count for much if it does. Unfortunately, minds can’t be laundered like sheets. Sarah Graham asks Tim Cook, consultant in anaesthesia and intensive care medicine at Royal United Hospitals in Bath, UK, and Greg Martin, president of the US Society of Critical Care Medicine, about the impact of the pandemic on ICU doctors and nurses.
Practical Patient Care /
www.practical-patient-care.com
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Shutterstock.com
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