Critical Care = Tender Care
Since the time of Florence Nightingale, the need for critical care specialists has been recognized and has evolved. Critical care is most often recognized in the Emergency Room or Trauma Center, but is conspicuously present in other areas of the hospital like the post-surgical unit, recovery room, intensive care unit or neo-natal intensive care unit.
The first care center to address the needs of premature infants was established in 1927, in Chicago, at the Sarah Morris Hospital and set standards for post-natal care of these most precious little ones across the medical industry. Today this care has risen to levels completely unforeseen in 1927 to save even the most fragile of lives.
During World War II, the need for resuscitative care for battle-injured soldiers and those undergoing surgery, resulted in the first ’shock’ wards, or what we know today as the ‘crash cart’ and the code blue call, while a couple of years later the polio epidemic that swept through Europe and the U.S. resulted in the manual ventilation of patients through a tube placed in the trachea. In the 1950s the first ICUs, intensive care units, came into being as mechanical ventilation went from fantasy to reality, and by the 1960s most hospitals in the United States had at least one ICU.
Since 1986 there has been a certification of special competence for the four primary boards in critical care: anesthesiology, surgery, internal medicine and pediatrics. Just as there are specialists in each of these four skill sets, there are specialists in caring for the critically ill under these same four areas of expertise. Extravagant life saving techniques are common place among these specialists and no one does it like they can.
And today you can add Trauma specialists to the health care community. These are the people who deal specifically with traumatic injury. You will find Emergency Rooms across the world staffed with these amazing people whose first order of business is to save lives. You will find them staffing ambulances and helicopters as first responders when seconds can make the difference between life and death. And you will find them in trauma centers in hospitals around the world. These angels of mercy who do everything in their power to stabilize critically injured patients in order to pass them along to their comrades in arms who can give patients the level of care required to make them healthy again.
So, say a prayer or thank them in your heart each time that you see the flashing red lights of an ambulance or a medical helicopter. Know that when critical care is needed, either for a loved one or for you, that there are specially trained medical personnel close by. Know that these chosen people are modern day super heroes, not the stuff of comic books and the Saturday Night Movie. Be thankful that these good Samaritans have taken the time to learn everything possible in order to save lives. Wonder that they work long and hard and emotional hours, often getting little sleep, and then get up to do it all over again. Remember that they can’t save everyone, but that the one they save may be someone close to you, and remember that they feel those losses just as everyone else does. They have chosen a life that does not always come with happy times and with success. Instead they have chosen a life that is hard, bloody, and often seems to be a thankless job as violence and needless killing and drunken manslaughter or murder fills the pages of our newspapers and our news broadcasts.
Be thankful for these angels and be mindful of their chosen path. It is not an easy one, but one that is more likely to have a happy ending with them in it.
