What is Critical Care?
June 2, 2021
The Emergency/Critical Care teams help pets with life-threatening injuries and illnesses. Critical Care specialty teams, including our Critical Care specialists, emergency clinicians and nursing staff, help treat complications from surgery, trauma, accidents, infections, organ failure and severe heart and breathing problems. The critical care team is a group of specially trained veterinary caregivers who work in both the emergency room and in a special area of the hospital known as the Intensive Care Unit, or ICU. Their main focus is to help very ill patients get better. The critical care nursing team serves as a valuable source of information regarding the minute-to-minute status of critically ill patients, and they are committed to teaching patients’ family’s strategies to improve favorable outcomes.
Critical Care management involves close, constant attention by a team of specially-trained pet health care providers. Critical care takes place in an ICU or trauma center and typically relies on specialized monitors, point-of-care ultrasound, intravenous (IV) tubes, feeding tubes, urinary catheters, breathing machines, and other medical equipment. Critical Care specialty medicine is a rapidly growing area of specialty medicine and has seen tremendous advancements that are now helping many pets survive conditions that were once considered fatal. We are here for you when you need us the most and our Critical Care specialists are prepared to provide you and your pet the highest level of emergency and critical care medicine.
Critical Care Specialists
Criticalists undergo rigorous specialty training focused on caring for every aspect of the critically ill patient. They work with our other specialists to manage the patients with multiple co-morbidities affecting a number of body systems. Criticalists provide a high level of broad interdisciplinary expertise that allows for the unique collaboration amongst specialists to care for the most severely ill and injured pets. Specialized services at the core of critical care include trauma management, mechanical ventilation, CPR and post-arrest care, transfusion medicine, post-surgical recovery, acute organ failure and sepsis management, and tailored pain control planning.
Our Criticalists partner closely with our emergency clinicians and nurses to provide expedient and problem directed care to our most urgent patients. Together, these teams use innovative approaches such as point-of-care emergency ultrasound and fear-free handling techniques to gently assess and care for beloved pets in times of crisis. Our team is instrumental in the transition of care not only between specialists at Ethos hospitals, but also partner with your family veterinarian to allow seamless case management for future and on-going care.
All pets admitted to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) are closely monitored and continually assessed by our Criticalist and specialized ICU nursing team.