Critical Care

Critical Care is a service provided for some of our sickest patients, who require extensive physiological and psychological support and rely on a highly skilled team to care for them. It is a high cost, low volume, demand-led service, essential to acute trusts for the delivery of core services such as elective surgery and emergency admissions.

What this means for the workforce
The critical care environment is a highly technical one, as new equipment and procedures are continually being developed; up to date training is imperative if staff are to practice safely. As well as the significant additional education and training required to meet National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) recommendations, the critical care workforce faces a number of other challenges, including the need to remain fit for purpose as healthcare undergoes restructuring, staffing reviews and continuing financial constraints.

Resources
Skills for Health has a wide range of products and services that support the development of the workforce to meet the challenges of the Critical Care environment.

Using the Skills for Health tools, the Career framework and National Occupational Standards have been used to describe the characteristics of a number of roles in the professional multi-disciplinary team. The Health Functional Map was used to identify National Occupational Standards in relation to functions in general Critical Care patient pathways.

Using these resources, Cheshire and Mersey Critical Care Network with Skills for Health have produced a document, Critical for Care, which describes an education framework for professional staff working in Critical Care. This will enable the transformation of the current fragmented approach into a coherent multi-professional programme, and help to support further development of a national career and educational framework for their critical care workforce.

Benefits are:

NOS relating to the elements of the Educational Framework for Critical Care.

Related documents

• National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (2007) The Care of the Acutely Ill: NICE Guidance 50. NICE
• Critical Care Stakeholder Forum (2005) Quality Critical Care: Beyond Comprehensive Critical Care. London. DH
• Modernising AHP Careers DH 2008
• Modernising Nursing Careers DH 2008

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Some policies, strategies and guidance were developed under the previous government and as such may be subject to review by the Coalition Government.