Transport of Critically Ill Patients – A Review of Early Interventions, Protocols, and Recommendations

The transportation of critically ill patients into or outside the hospital (ICU) has been associated with several adverse events [1, 2]. Mostly, patients admitted to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) are considered to be critically ill. ICU can provide the best possible care to the patients, including monitoring, multiple organ support, frequent clinical round, and dedicated staff members for each patient. However, specific situations occur when the patient has to be transported out of the ICU to the best of the patient's interest. The benefits attached to the purpose of the transportation outweigh the risks. This literature review aims to summarize timely interventions, minimum standards for transportation, transport protocols, and recommendations to reduce critically ill patients to the potential risk in the ICU. We aim to improve the quality of patient care, risk evaluation, minimizing preventable hazards, standardization of the protocols, homogeneity of the modalities involved in the patient’s transport, and ultimately improving the patient’s health care environment. Findings shows that, a total of 1.7% of adverse events during transportation were identified. In this study, 3383 charts of completed transports were observed [6]. The incidence of adverse effects is quite variable, i.e., from 1.7% to 75.7%, and in other studies, it is sometimes recorded as high as 80% [4].