Abstract

Critical Care Outreach teams have been developed in most acute hospitals within the UK. This article aims to summarise the evidence behind the development of this service and some of the outcomes which have been demonstrated to-date.
[download-attachments container="div" style="list" dipslay_icon="1" display_count="1" display__size="0"]

References

1. Department of Health. Comprehensive Critical Care: a review of adult critical care services. London: Department of Health; 2000.
2. NHS Executive. Modernising Critical Care Services. Health Service circular (HSC 2000017). London: Department of Health 2000.
3. Department of Health. Quality critical care. Beyond ‘comprehensive critical care’. London Department of Health; 2005.
4. The Intensive Care Society. Guidelines for the introduction of Outreach Services. Standards and guidelines 2002.
5. McDonnell A, Esmonde L, Morgan L et al. The provision of critical care outreach services in England: findings from a national survey. Journal of Critical Care 2007; 22: 212-8.
6. NCEPOD 2005. An Acute Problem?
7. McQuillan P, Pilkington S, Allan A et al. Confidential inquiry into quality of care before admission to intensive care. British Medical Journal 1998; 316: 1853-8.
8. Schein RM, Hazday N, Pena M et al. Clinical antecedents to in-hospitalcardiopulmonary arrest. Chest 1990; 98: 1388-92.
9. Franklin C, Mathew J. Developing strategies to prevent inhospital cardiac arrest: analyzing responses of physicians and nurses in the hours before the event. Crit Care Med 1994; 22: 214-7.
10. Buist MD, Jarmalowski E, Burton PR et al. Recognising clinical instability in hospital patients before cardiac arrest or unplanned admissions to intensive care. A pilot study in a tertiary-care hospital. Med J Aus 1999; 171: 22-5.
11. Lee A, Bishop G, Hillman KM, Daffurn K. The Medical Emergency Team. Anaesth Intensive Care 1995; 23: 183-6.
12. Bristow PJ, Hillman KM, Chey T et al. Rates of in-hospital arrests, deaths and intensive care admissions: the effect of a medical emergency team. Med J Aus 2000; 173: 236-40.
13. Buist MD, Moore GE, Bernard SA et al. Effects of a medical emergency team on reduction of incidence of and mortality from unexpected cardiac arrests in hospital: preliminary study. British Medical Journal 2002; 324: 387-90.
14. DeVita MA, Braithwaite RS, Mahidhara R et al. Use of medical emergency team responses to reduce hospital cardiopulmonary arrests. Qual Saf Health Care 2004; 13: 251-4.
15. Bellomo R, Goldsmith D, Uchino S et al. A prospective before and after trial of of a medical emergency team. Med J Aus 2003; 179: 283-7.
16. Hillman K, Chen J, Cretikos M et al. Introduction of the medical emergency team (MET) system: a cluster-randomised controlled trial. The Lancet 2005; 365: 2091-7.
17. Jones D, Moritoki E, Bellomo R and Goldsmith D. Effect of the medical emergency team on long-term mortality following major surgery. Critical Care 2007; 11: R12.
18. Jones D, George C, Hart G et al. Introduction of Medical Emergency Teams in Australia and New Zealand: a multi-centre study. Critical Care 2008; 12: R46.
19. Goldhill DR, Worthington L, Mulcahy A et al. The patient-at-risk team: identifying and managing seriously ill ward patients. Anaesthesia 1999; 54: 853-60.
20. Priestley G, Watson W, Rashidian A et al. Introducing Critical Care Outreach: a ward-randomised trial of phased introduction in a general hospital. Intensive Care Medicine 2004; 30: 1398-404.
21. Morgan RJM, Williams F, Wright MM. An early warning scoring system for detecting developing critical illness. Clin Intensive Care 1997; 8(2): 100.
22. Stenhouse C, Coates S, Tivey M et al. Prospective evaluation of a modified Early Warning Score to aid earlier detection of patients developing critical illness on a general surgical ward. BJA 2000; 84(5): 663.
23. Groarke JD, Gallagher J, Stack J et al. Use of an admission early warning score to predict patient morbidity and mortality and treatment success. Emerg. Med J 2008; 25: 803-6.
24. Subbe CP, Kruger M, Rutherford P and Gemmel L. Validation of a modified Early Warning Score in medical admissions. Q J Med 2001; 94: 521-6.
25. Armagan E, Yilmaz Y, Olmez OF et al. Predictive value of the modified Early Warning Score in a Turkish emergency department. Eur J Emerg Med 2008; 15(6): 338-40.
26. Esmonde L, McDonnell A, Ball C et al. Investigating the effectiveness of critical care outreach services: a systematic review. Intensive Care Medicine 2006; 32: 1713-21.
27. Gao H, Harrison DA, Parry GJ et al. The impact of the introduction of critical care outreach services in England: a multicentre interrupted timeseries anaylysis. Critical Care 2007; 11: R113.
28. Campbell AJ, Cook JA, Adey G and Cuthbertson BH. Predicting death and readmission after intensive care discharge. BJA 2008; 100(5): 656-62.
29. Rosenberg AL, Watts AL. Patients readmitted to ICUs*. Chest 2000; 118: 492-502.
30. Ball C, Kirkby M and Williams S. Effect of the critical care outreach team on patient survival to discharge from hospital and readmission to critical care: non-randomised population based study BMJ 2003; 327: 1014-7.
31. Leary T, Ridley S. Impact of an outreach team on re-admissions to a critical care unit. Anaesthesia 2003; 58: 32-32.