Help is here

“No man is an island,” said the poet John Donne, but when you’re a junior doctor whose patient’s vital signs are spiralling in a worrying direction you’ll have never felt more alone, says an article in this month’s Education section. The truth is that help is always just a bleep away (doi:10.1136/sbmj.c900). When your team goes home and the on-call doctors are tied up with an emergency, leaving you stranded with an increasingly ill patient, you can call the critical care outreach team. These teams should exist in some form in every hospital in the United Kingdom. They provide support to ward teams when their patients show signs of becoming critically ill, and they can help to instigate care that will either avert admission or facilitate timely admission to intensive care. They’re also armed with critical care skills and a wealth of experience. Of course, their help and support should