Recommendations for Appropriate Use of Critical Care Services

Three Ontario critical care specialists have published "Multi-Professional Recommendations for Access and Utilization of Critical Care Services: Towards Consistency in Practice and Ethical Decision-Making Processes" in the latest issue of the Journal of Law, Medicine, and Ethics (also here).  



The brief abstract states:  "Multi-professional guidelines for fair access to and use of adult critical care services are desperately needed to define a consistent transparent standard of care: when such therapies have the potential to benefit and help a patient as they journey with illness and when they cannot."  The authors claim that their recommendations for appropriate use of critical care services "are the first of their kind in that they seek to respond to the challenging day to day decision-making dilemmas faces by front-line clinicians."