ABSTRACT
This chapter sits between presentation of the study and the main chapters that explore key issues relating to clinical decision making in intensive care. In this chapter I set the scene so that the reader can understand the context within which decision making occurred.There are two elements to this.The first is to have a familiarity with the settings within which this work was undertaken. To this end, in the first half of the chapter I describe the specific clinical units. In this, I will describe the units with details about their size, clinical services offered together with any general observations made while I was undertaking fieldwork. Any specific projects or developments that occurred on the unit during the study and that I used to explore interdisciplinary working are also made explicit.
