Abstract
Intensivists, the physicians that practice the art and science of intensive care medicine, have a challenging task. Our field of action presents unique characteristics that make it distinct from most fields of medicine: we deal with a quite heterogeneous population, with our patients presenting a wide range of ages, comorbid diseases, reasons for seeking medical care, and specific needs for care. Moreover, the time window for our interventions is measured often in minutes rather than in days or months. For this reason, we traditionally practice our specialty inside special places in the hospital, the so-called Intensive Care Units (ICUs) where all the technical and human expertise are assembled together in order to optimize the science and art of preventing, detecting, and managing patients at risk or with already-established critical illness in order to achieve the best possible outcomes of care. This task is a complex process, carried out on a very heterogeneous patient population, and influenced by several variables that include religious and cultural background, different structures and organizations of the health care systems, and major differences in the baseline characteristics of the populations.
“The power and the beauty of science do not rest upon infallibility, which it has not, but on corrigibility, without which it is nothing” Howard Gruber
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Moreno, R.P., Diogo, A.C., Afonso, S. (2009). Scoring Systems. In: Gullo, A., Lumb, P.D., Besso, J., Williams, G.F. (eds) Intensive and Critical Care Medicine. Springer, Milano. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-88-470-1436-7_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-88-470-1436-7_9
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