ABSTRACT
Critical illness is costly. Mortality and morbidity are higher than with less advanced disease; emotional costs to patients, relatives and staff are also significant. But in a world of finite resources, and increasing financial pressures, financial costs affect care. In 2004, costs per patient day were £1,328 in ICUs, compared with £195 for wards (Ridley and Morris, 2006). Inevitably, the high financial costs of ICUs invite scrutiny. The introduction of tariffs into the UK’s National Health Service is intended to improve quality and productivity (DH, 2009a). Increasing financial pressures are paralleled by increasingly higher public and political expectations. Nurses must therefore assert the financial value of ICU care in the marketplace of healthcare. While financial costs may have some objectivity, subjectivity surrounds human costs. Having reached the end of this book, nurses developing their ICU careers should be grappling with the questions:
n What price intensive care? n Are the costs of treating critical illness justifiable from financial, humani-
tarian, and/or moral and ethical perspectives? n Are the costs of nurses and nursing justifiable?
