We used the following question in a large classroom session attended by undergraduate medical students and doctors with a Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS) degree (240 in all) to test for conceptual understanding as to what constitutes arterial blood oxygenation. The question read as follows: Which one of the following physiological parameters taken alone tells you that arteri...

Pharmacological treatment of critically ill obstetric patients can be especially challenging due to the complexity of caring for 2 patients, with a paucity of research to support practice. This review will provide practitioners with primary recommendations for management of the critical illnesses most commonly encountered in pregnancy and will discuss the scientific and clinical merit of these ...

Emergency physicians care for a high volume of critically ill and injured patients, generally with no prior knowledge of patients’ histories and, usually, with little or no warning of patients’ arrival. Despite the careful, knowledgeable, compassionate practice of most emergency physicians, bad outcomes will occur. There is no way to completely avoid being named in a malpractice suit because a ...

Despite improvements in communication, errors in end-of-life care continue to be made. For example, healthcare professionals may take direction from the wrong substitute decision-maker, or from family members when the patient is capable; permit families to propose treatment plans; conflate values and beliefs with prior expressed wishes or fail to inquire about prior expressed wishes. Sometimes ...

Analysis of Chinese ICU staffing in relation to final outcome yields comparable results as those reported in Western ICUs. This underlines the general principle that we would all like to apply in our hospitals; that is, availability of knowledgeable staff that are adequately trained to recognize and treat an acutely deteriorating critically ill patient as soon as possible.