What is Critical Care

Critical care deals with patients who face life-threatening conditions. There are several critical care or intensive care units within a hospital, including Trauma Intensive Care. Critical care nurses are especially needed in this industry.Critical care refers to a branch of medicine that deals with patients who are critically ill and usually require intensive monitoring. It is also referred to as intensive care medicine. Patients who receive critical care in a hospital setting are typically admitted to the Intensive Care Unit or ICU. These individuals are often suffering from life-threatening conditions that involve multiple critical organs, such as the lungs, heart, and brain. The area of critical care primarily deals with the most essential systems of the body. These systems include the cardiovascular system, the central nervous system, the endocrine system, the gastro-intestinal tract, and the respiratory system.The Intensive Care Unit is often broken down into several sub-units. These units may include the Coronary Intensive Care Unit, the Medical Intensive Care Unit, The Surgical Intensive Care Unit, the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit, the Neuroscience Critical Care Unit, the Overnight Intensive Recovery Unit, the Shock/Trauma Intensive Care Unit, and the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. All such units tend to include the same types of common equipment. This equipment might include mechanical ventilation to help patients breathe via an endotrachael tube or a tracheotomy, intravenous lines for drug infusion fluids, hemofiltration equipment for acute renal failure, monitoring equipment, suction pumps, drains, catheters, nasogastric tubes, as well as a wide range of drugs such as sedatives, antibiotics, analgesics, and inotropes.Critical care nurses are the people who are responsible for caring for patients in the Intensive Care Unit. Critical care nurses can also work in emergency rooms, cardiac care units, and recovery rooms within hospital settings. Other critical care nurses work in outpatient settings, managed care organizations, and home healthcare. Any registered nurse can work in critical care, but special certification is sometimes required first. The need for critical care nurses is currently on the rise. Critical care is a serious area of medicine that requires the upmost professionalism from those involved.