Each year, near a quarter of a million people are admitted to intensive care. Of those patients who survive ICU, most face long periods of recovery and rehab and sometimes long term functional limitations. One of the biggest impacts is significant psychological affects they encounter from the trauma of being in intensive care. 61% of patients suffer from depression within the first five years and more than 25% of patients suffer from PTSD after leaving ICU care, with some never fully recovering.

One in six of us will be admitted in to critical care in our lifetime, so what we do today can help improve tomorrow for our patients!

The ICS has made amazing progress over the years in supporting the growth and demands of Intensive Care Medicine. We are proud of everything we have achieved and all of the opportunities we have given over our 50 years. 

But we need to do more!

To truly transform intensive care, we need to grow and sustain the Intensive Care Society. We thus ask volunteers across the UK to help us raise £50 million, starting from our 50th year in 2020 #ICS50. Some of the main aims with this funding:

Projects to humanise the ICU. Intensive Care Units involve constant noise, alarms and other unsettling sounds for the patient or relative. It involves constant or irregular exposure to artificial light- but new lighting systems can create 'natural' light and day/night cycles. Facilities for relatives can be limited. So too can those for staff. Using modern technology we can limit the effects of excessive sound, create 'natural' light by creating day/night cycles and overall, improve patient, public and staff health inside the ICU. 

Research: Every year the ICS receives dozens of high quality research proposals and concepts. With such a limited budget sadly we have to turn a lot of these projects down. With your help we can work towards maximising the potential of UK critical care research and fund more lifesaving programmes. 

Infrastructure costs: nurses, trainee doctors and other multi-professional staff pay to support the society and their own training. By raising funds to sustain the charity for another 50 years they could rely on us more than we rely on them!

Please give generously- and contact us directly for more information or if you'd like to discuss this further please email info@ics.ac.uk. 

With your help we can achieve anything and we can save lives!

*The ICS will collate all funds centrally and redistribute nationally according to agreed criteria. All money donated will stored in unrestricted funds to deliver a range of activities within the charity's objectives.