Letters
Centralised paediatric intensive care beds are blocked
EDITOR,--While I echo D W Ryan's call for more resources for intensive care, I take issue with Ryan's choice of words when referring to paediatric intensive care.1 The inability of major paediatric centres to accept all referrals for intensive care may undermine but in no way negates the British Paediatric Association's recommendation that sick children be provided with specialist nursing and medical care.2 The recommendation is sound.
Centralisation of paediatric intensive care is the way forward, as Shann3 and others have urged. But there are other reasons, apart from a lack of resources, for the shortage of acute paediatric intensive care beds. More children are surviving previously fatal illnesses but remain dependent on a ventilator. At present there is no facility for caring for these long stay patients who no longer need the full resources available in intensive care units. Altogether 42% of our acute paediatric intensive care beds are
CiteULike 
Complore 
Connotea 
Del.icio.us 
Digg 
Reddit 
Technorati What's this?
Relevant Article
- Providing intensive care
- D W Ryan
BMJ 1996 312: 654.[Extract] [Full Text]
This Article
- Full text
- Respond to this article
- Alert me when this article is cited
- Alert me when responses are posted
- Alert me when a correction is posted
Services
- Email this article to a friend
- Find similar articles in BMJ
- Add article to my folders
- Download to citation manager
- Request Permissions
Citing Articles
Google Scholar
PubMed
Related Content
-
Neonatal and paediatric intensive care
-
Adult intensive care
- Paediatric intensive care
- Relevant Article
- Find this article in its weekly table of contents
Bookmark with
What's new
Latest blogs
Find BMJ on:
Services
Tools
Online poll
Resources
Rapid responses for this article
There are no rapid responses for this article. Print issues
