Introduction to the Rapid Response Systems Series

摘要

In the late 1980s several groups began work on a sys-tern of care that bypassed normal hospital hierar-chies to provide critical care services to patients with sudden critical illness outside the intensive care unit (ICU). The teams were small, but mobile, bringing personnel (ICU nurses and critical care physicians), equipment (monitors and defibrillators), and medicines to deliver ICU-type care. They are called medical emergency teams (METs). The efforts proved fruitful, although the required cultural change was initially difficult, and the hospital data reflected a decrease in hospital cardiac arrest rate, and, more importantly, a reduction in the hospital death rate.