This document has been produced to provide guidance for intensive care teams to facilitate end of life care for their patients in an outdoor space. We hope that it will encourage and empower the healthcare team to address what matters most to our patients at the end of their lives where these wishes include an outdoor space. For this document, we define the outdoor space as any environment that is not within the fully enclosed direct patient care area of the intensive care unit and might include garden rooms that are separate from the immediate ward environment. This guidance considers patients with varying levels of nursing dependency or organ support needs. We define end of life care as the care delivered to patients who are deemed to have little or no chance of recovery, and a senior decision has been taken to focus on comfort and dignity in this final phase of a patient’s life. This may include situations when withdrawal of life sustaining treatment is planned.
Endorsed by Association of Palliative Medicine of Great Britain and Ireland , UK Critical Care Nursing Alliance and Marie Curie.
