Philosophy of care, decision making, and ethical considerations

The very nature of critical care opens the door to controversy, for it is in the intensive care unit that staggering amounts of money and human resources are expended. The outcome is frequently suboptimal, and the feeling often persists that our patients, who should be the beneficiaries of our efforts, are paying a tremendous price in the form of isolation from loved ones, life-support systems that do not allow them to communicate with their families or caretakers, and the physical pain of multisystem failure. As Carlon has recently asked, are we allocating our limited resources inappropriately because we are unable to select patients who will not survive despite our intensive care units? This concern may be justified. However, the work we do in the intensive care unit has another, more positive intangible result. Many of the breakthroughs in medicine have been achieved by dedicated pioneers who tried to accomplish something that had not been accomplished before. At first their efforts were often challenged as being useless or overly extravagant or were even opposed as a violation of God's will or the laws of nature. Developing new forms of treatment, some of which can only be tested in an intensive care unit, is a challenge for all of us. We must, of course, balance what we are trying to accomplish with what we spend, since too much as well as too little emphasis on new techniques is suboptimal. If we persevere, some of what we find impossible to achieve today will become possible tomorrow, will become the norm of the future, and will, we hope, give way to still better innovations as medicine continues to evolve.