By the end of this section you should be able to:

• Recognise the clinical features that indicate a patient requires ICU assessment or admission
• Use the NEWS2 scoring system to identify at-risk patients and understand the appropriate escalation thresholds
• Structure an ICU referral using the SBAR framework
• Understand what information the ICU team needs and why early referral matters
• Document a referral correctly and know what to do while awaiting ICU review