Monitoring the critically ill patient.

Monitoring is the key to a successful critical care endeavor. It is the only way in which we know if we did a good thing and if we did enough of it (or too much). Oftentimes, the decision to treat or not to treat is made difficult by the paucity of information available. The secret is to make an intuitive decision and then monitor the patient to see if it was the right or the wrong decision. Most wrong decisions can be caught and corrected long before the patient has suffered the consequences. Go forth, and monitor!