Intensive Care / Critical Care

UK sources of information and / or support

 BLISS - The Premature Baby Charity

BLISS provides support and information for parents who have - or have had - a baby in special care.

 Scottish Intensive Care Society

Professional organisation but has a section on their website aimed at patients and relatives which includes information on Emergency admission to hospital, Intensive care units and what to expect, Visiting an ICU, and What does all the equipment do?

 ICU steps - the support team for ex-ICU patients

A support group set up by ex-patients and family members ofMilton Keynes Hospital Intensive Care Unit who have been unfortunate tosuffer life threatening injury or illness. They offer support and toshare experiences in the long recovery period. They hold regular drop-insfor anyone to come along and talk about anything they wish. The web site tells of ex-patients and family members own experiences and offers a bulletin board and a contact page. It also gives the dates of all our drop-ins and any future fund raising events.

 Medicine Guide for Intensive Care

Medicine Guides provide reliable information about medicines (drugs), conditions and the different treatment options available. They have been developed in the UK as part of the Medicines Information Project.

  DIPEx

DIPEx (Database of Individual Patient Experiences) is an Oxford based registered charity. It is a database of audio, video and transcript of interviews with patients experiencing a particular illness or health problem. Includes a module on intensive care.

 Intensive Care Society

Brings together clinicians whose main interest is caring for critically ill patients. Membership includes anaesthetists, surgeons and physicians. The Society also has a rapidly growing nurse and professionally allied membership including unit managers and other non-medical staff involved in intensive care. Some of the information on their website may be of interest to the general public.

 Breathe On UK

Site set up to support all parents of children on long term ventilation in the UK.

 National Association of Psychiatric Intensive Care Units

A multi disciplinary organisation committed to the development of psychiatric intensive care and low secure services. The site enables visitors to find out more about the organisation, share information on forth comming events and participate in discussions and surveys and audits on issues important to service provision. Some of the information on their website may be of interest to the general public.

Further sources / more detailed information

Some non-UK sites

The following list popular non-UK health information sites with content aimed at the general public. They are mainly from the US. They have not been checked to see if information about the above topic is included but these large sites are comprehensive.

• Non-UK disease / illness sites
• Non-UK self-help / support group sites

More detailed medical information

The following list online sources of more detailed medical information, mainly from the UK. These sites are mainly aimed at health professionals, but are of interest to all. They have not been checked to see if information about the above topic is included, but information about most medical topics can usually be found.

• PatientPlus - hundreds of medical reference articles provided by Patient UK.
• Evidence Based Medicine - such as from Clinical Evidence, The Cochrane Library, etc.
• Database of UK Clinical Guidelines - from NICE, SIGN, Clinical Knowledge Summaries, etc.
• Medline - abstracts available from thousands of journals.
• Sites listing free online medical textbooks and journals.
• Sites listing free medical images - pictures, atlases, anatomy, skin diseases, etc.