NHS patients who are critically ill are usually cared for in critical care units. These units provide close nursing and medical attention and combine both intensive (highest level) and high dependency (intermediate level) care. Over the past fifty years, a wealth of experience from treating critically ill patients in the NHS has been accumulated. It is important that all patients requiring critical care benefit from this experience and get it as soon as it is required this involves those working on general wards recognising when a patient is deteriorating.Over the past three years, critical care outreach teams, usually led by an experienced critical care nurse, have been established: to help staff identify deteriorating patients; to provide advice or treatment; to ensure swift admission into the critical care unit; and to share skills. Monitoring systems have been created, such that, when the patients blood pressure, heart rate, breathing rate, temperature or conscious level reaches a certain threshold, the outreach team is called. Outreach teams also monitor the recovery of patients after discharge to the ward from the critical care unit. By increasing communication between critical care unit and ward staff, it is hoped that critical care skills will be shared and that both sides and the patient will benefit.