• hospital care
• clinical assessment
• clinical decisions
• terminal care
• service evaluation

Guidelines and literature relating to critical care outreach teams (CCOT) focus on positive outcomes for those receiving timely admission to critical care but do not address the optimisation of appropriate palliative care for those in whom critical care admission is inappropriate.¹

CCOT mostly comprise band six and/or seven nurses with consultant support. They attend acutely deteriorating patients and make decisions on direction of care based on patient’s current condition, clinical frailty and comorbidities. Patients are triaged to critical care, optimal ward management or end of life care (EOLC).² Arguably patients in the latter two groups should be assessed by a member of the specialist palliative care team (SPCT) to evaluate the need for ongoing support.

The objectives of this study were to perform a retrospective service evaluation of patient outcome following CCOT review in patients deemed unsuitable for critical care admission including identifying those which received, and which should have received SPCT review.

Patients were included in the study if they were reviewed by the South Tees Hospitals CCOT in October to December 2018 and escalation of care to a higher dependency setting was deemed inappropriate. SPCT review suitability was assessed by …