Chapter 21 Patient transport and retrieval
Transferring critically ill or injured patients between hospitals is a potentially dangerous business. Although these transfers occur commonly, care needs to be taken to ensure that they are performed appropriately and safely. The Australasian critical care specialty colleges have issued joint policy documents specifying minimum standards of care required in these circumstances, and these are essential reading for staff involved.1,2
INDICATIONS FOR RETRIEVAL
It is important to develop referral systems so that time is not wasted searching for a receiving hospital. These may be statewide or regional systems, or simply agreements between small hospitals and larger centres. An essential component of such systems is the ability of a practitioner in a small facility to be able to find a receiving hospital and get clinical advice with little difficulty, preferably via a single phone call.