ABSTRACT
What is the purpose of nurses in an ICU? What does critical illness and admission to intensive care cost patients and their families? In the busyness of everyday practice, these fundamental questions can be too easily forgotten. Yet an ICU is expensive: staffing accounts for half of the ICU budgets, and nursing accounts for most staffing costs (Edbrooke et al., 1999). So ICU nurses need to clarify their value and ‘articulate the importance of their role in caring for patients and their relatives’ (Wilkinson, 1992: 196). This book explores issues for ICU nursing practice; this section establishes core fundamental aspects of ICU nursing. To help readers articulate the importance of their role, this chapter explores what nursing means in the context of intensive care, while Chapter 2 outlines two schools of psychology (Behaviourism and Humanism) that have influenced healthcare and society.
