ABSTRACT
This chapter provides practical insight into providing care to children for nurses who have varying paediatric experiences. It outlines the principles of caring for a critically ill child. Children require access to specialist staff trained in paediatrics. With limited access to paediatric trained staff, many children will be initially managed by healthcare workers with varying paediatric skills and experiences. The World Federation of Paediatric Intensive and Critical Care defined critical care as ‘the treatment of a child with a life-threatening illness or injury in its broadest sense, without regard for the location and including pre-hospital and emergency and intensive care’. With limited pre-hospital emergency medical services, patients may present in late stages and arrive with minimal to no interventions. An airway obstruction is a medical emergency. The mouth is easily compressible and the soft tissues could become compressed causing an airway obstruction when performing airway manoeuvres.
