Critical care retrieval and transport
One-day course
Moving a critically ill patient is not simply combining critical care and a vehicle - transport changes the clinical environment.
In the ICU or ED, clinicians generally have space, equipment, lighting, additional staff and relatively easy access to the patient. During transport, those assumptions disappear.
The patient may be difficult to access; surrounded by equipment;
mechanically ventilated; receiving multiple infusions; physiologically unstable; moving; poorly illuminated; and
physically separated from additional clinical support.
At the same time, clinicians are dealing with stretcher systems, oxygen supplies, batteries, cables, pumps, vehicle movement, communication and transport decisions.
The Critical Care Retrieval & Transport Programme develops clinicians capable of planning, preparing, packaging, transferring and safely delivering critically ill patients between healthcare environments.
The programme emphasises the practical realities of road-based critical care transfer, using realistic patient packaging, transport equipment, stretcher systems and ambulance-based simulation.
Participants work in multidisciplinary retrieval teams, integrating:
CLINICAL CARE + PREPARATION + EQUIPMENT + LOGISTICS + COMMUNICATION + TEAMWORK + ANTICIPATION + HUMAN FACTORS
The programme does not attempt to turn participants into specialist retrieval clinicians in one day. Instead, its objective is to give clinicians a structured understanding of what makes transfer different, how to prepare for those differences, and how to respond when something goes wrong away from the resources of the hospital.