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Transition from PICU to adult critical care
- Professor Natalie PattisonProfessor of Clinical Nursing at King's College London
Key points
- Adult intensive care units need to be well resourced and trained, with named transition leads, to receive young people from paediatric intensive care.
- A shared care approach and a structured approach to transition are essential for individualised, person-centred care.
- Young people, and not just their parents, should be asked where they would prefer to receive their care.
Professor Natalie Pattison, Professor of Clinical Nursing at King's College London, provides insights into the transition from paediatric intensive care to adult critical care. She discusses the preparation adult services need to receive young people, including appropriate resources, staff training and named transition leads. The interview highlights the importance of a structured, shared approach between services while recognising that each person's circumstances and preferences are different. Professor Pattison emphasises involving young people themselves, as well as their families, and understanding what matters to them when planning where and how their care is delivered.
This interview took place at the PCCS Annual Scientific Meeting 2026 in London.
Read the transcript
Automatic transcript, lightly edited for readability. It may contain errors, so check it against the video before quoting.
So thank you for allowing me to have a little bit of a chat about transition from paediatric intensive care to adult critical care, and some of the issues that we talked about today relate to how well prepared adult intensive cares are in terms of receiving these patients.
I think one of the key things that I'd like to convey is the fact that adult intensive cares can receive these patients. We don't have enough PICU beds in the world, but actually we need to make sure that our adult intensive care colleagues are well resourced and trained and that we have named transition leads to be able to receive these patients. And approaching that transition through a shared care approach and a structured approach is essential to make sure that we provide that individualistic and person-centred care, and ultimately it has to be on an individualistic level.
We have to ask those individuals, not just the parents as well. The child, if they're able to communicate that, also needs to tell us where they would prefer to receive their care. Because we know from the literature that it's not where they received their care that is the most important thing. It's about how they feel that they received their care and what was important to them and how that was respected.
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Cite this video
Professor Natalie Pattison. “Transition from PICU to adult critical care.” The Paediatric Video Journal, 7 November 2026. https://paediatricvj.com/videos/transition-from-picu-to-adult-critical-care-pattison/
This interview is educational content intended for healthcare professionals and is not medical advice. Views expressed are those of the speaker. © The Paediatric Video Journal. All rights reserved.