Department of Critical Care and Anaesthesia, University Hospital Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust, Queen Elizabeth Medical Centre, Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 2PR, UK. kaye.england@uhb.nhs.uk
ABSTRACT : The philosophy behind medical emergency teams (METs) or rapid response teams leaving the intensive care unit (ICU) to evaluate and treat patients who are at risk on the wards and to prevent or rationalise admission to the ICU is by now well established in many health care systems. In a previous issue of Critical Care, Jones and colleagues report their analysis of the impact on outcomes of METs in hospitals in Australasia and link this to reports appearing in the world literature.