The Intensive Care Society is pleased to release an update to its CRITCON levels going live on the Directory of Service systems by 14 August 2023.
CRITCON translates the real-time observation & assessment of strain by critical care clinical leaders, both in routine circumstances and at times of high activity into a succinct communication score. This enables local, regional & national understanding of the strain experienced by any given unit or group of units, thereby allowing appropriate escalation, operational decision-making and load-balancing where necessary.
CRITCON & co-ordinated mutual aid are tools specifically designed to distribute resource, ensure equity of access, and avert the possibility of ANY unit or site being forced into a state of resource triage while there remains accessible capacity within the system.
CRITCON provides a simple tool to quickly and effectively describe and report the delicate balance between demand and capacity on critical care at a unit, region or national basis. CRITCON is core to ensuring appropriate staffing standards, quality care and patient safety. The Intensive Care Society is delighted to produce this important update and thank all of our contributors and partner organisations who have supported this release.
This updated tool provides broader criteria for each the levels to identify the strain status of individual units, networks of units and the country as a whole, accepting that pressures will be shared and distributed across the system.
Intensive Care Society’s, Dr Paul Dean, said “The revised CRITCON score reflects the provision of critical care across systems, it’s brought clarity to the objective measures whilst supporting units to continue to subjectively report how the stress and strain of the provision of high-quality critical care feels.
