Acute medicine is where clinical knowledge meets time pressure, incomplete information, and physiological instability. This chapter explores how clinicians recognise deterioration, prioritise action, and make decisions when delay itself becomes a risk.

In this deep dive, we examine the early identification of critical illness, the principles of resuscitation, and the logic behind structured approaches to acutely unwell patients. You’ll hear how pattern recognition, physiology, and teamwork converge in moments where clarity must be forged from urgency.

Rather than focusing on individual conditions, this chapter attends to states — shock, sepsis, respiratory failure, altered consciousness — and the disciplined thinking required to stabilise first and diagnose second. It is a chapter about readiness, vigilance, and the calm application of fundamentals under pressure.

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