Impact on 30-day survival of time taken by a critical care transport team to reach the bedside of critically ill children.

Abstract

[First paragraph] Following centralisation of paediatric intensive care in England and Wales, nearly 5000 critically ill children are transported from local hospitals to paediatric intensive care units (PICUs) annually. The majority of transports are performed by ten regionally based paediatric critical care transport teams (PCCTs) [1]. As arrival of the PCCT represents the first interaction these children have with specialist paediatric critical care, a key standard set by the national Paediatric Intensive Care Society (PICS) [2] is that a PCCT should arrive at the child’s bedside within three hours of agreeing they require PICU admission (referred to as ‘time-to-bedside’).