About Critical Care 

Adult Critical Care services include both High Dependency Care (sometimes called Level 2 care) and Intensive Care (or Level 3 care). Critical Care is usually delivered in dedicated Units within the hospital called High Dependency Units (HDUs) and Intensive Care Units (ICUs, also sometimes referred to as Intensive Therapy Units(ITUs) although in some hospitals these may be combined into a single Unit. 

Patients requiring Critical Care are usually very ill and require close attention and monitoring. The sickest patients are in ICUs and may, for example, need advanced respiratory support or have two or more organ systems (such as cardiac, neurological or respiratory etc.) that need supporting simultaneously. Most Critical Care Units in most NHS hospitals are equipped to deal with patients’ suffering from a range of different clinical conditions but some hospitals do have specialist Critical Care Units dealing with particular specialisms such as oncology, neurology, cardiac, transplantation etc.