Critical care (intensivists)

Critical care doctors are also called intensivists.

USNS Comfort Provides Care for Critical Patients in Intensive Care Unit

What is critical care?

Critical care is the medical care for people who have life-threatening injuries and illnesses usually provided in an intensive care unit also called ICU.

Intensivist

An intensivist is a physician, usually pulmonologist with additional training in critical care medicine or other medical practitioner who specializes in the care of critically ill patients, most often in the intensive care unit (ICU).

Critical care

Training and education

Intensivists can be internists or internal medicine sub-specialists (most often pulmonologists), anesthesiologists, emergency medicine physicians, pediatricians, neonatologists, or surgeons who have completed a fellowship in critical care medicine.

Multidisciplinary approach

Intensivists often involve many other specialists as part of the care provided to the patients. Intensivists coordinate, collaborate with other physicians, surgeons, respiratory therapists, pharmacists, dietitians and other disease specific experts.

Clinicians in Intensive Care Unit

Who needs critical care?

• Severe burns
• COVID-19
• Heart attack
• Heart failure
• Kidney failure
• Respiratory failure
• Sepsis
• Severe bleeding
• Serious infections
• Serious injuries, such as from car crashes, falls, and shootings
• Shock
• Stroke etc.

Bougainville locals returned after receiving critical care on the Mercy

Procedures performed by intensivists

• Central line or central venous catheter placement
• Catheter placement
• Feeding tube insertion
• Tracheostomy tube placement
• Mechanical ventilators
• Arterial catheterization
• Chest tube insertion
• Chest tube thoracostomy