Original title: Research priorities for intensive care: A stakeholder-informed priority-setting partnership
Samantha Keogh, Andrew J Neilson, Annabel Levido, Antony Attokaran +10 · September 2026
Intensive care units treat the sickest hospital patients, but doctors and researchers need to know which problems matter most to solve first. To find out, researchers set up a partnership between intensive care clinicians and consumers, meaning patients with lived experience and their family members. The team ran a five-stage project where people submitted questions they wanted answered. The researchers gathered these ideas together, trimmed down the list, and had people vote on them in a survey. Finally, a group met in person to discuss and agree on the top choices. The group reached an agreement on twelve top research questions. The most important areas focused on making better clinical and technology-supported decisions, helping patients survive and recover, supporting the healthcare workforce and hospital systems, and preventing deliriumA sudden state of confusion and disorientation that can happen to patients in intensive care., which is sudden severe confusion. They also decided consumer partnerships and putting findings into practice must guide all future work.
Imagine a group of friends planning a potluck dinner. Usually, the host decides the menu, but some guests have dietary needs that the host might not know about. Here, the researchers asked both the cooks (clinicians) and the eaters (patients and families) what dishes they wanted. By combining everyone's input, they created a menu that addressed the most important needs for everyone.
Intensive care research often focuses on what doctors think is important. This study let patients and families say what matters to them. The result is a research agenda that could improve recovery and care for millions who need intensive care.
The priorities were set by stakeholders in one Australian state, so they may not reflect needs in other regions or healthcare systems. The process involved a limited number of participants, and the final priorities are subjective. The study does not evaluate the effectiveness of these priorities in guiding research.
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Research priorities for intensive care: A stakeholder-informed priority-setting partnership — Samantha Keogh, Andrew J Neilson, Annabel Levido et al. — Critical care and resuscitation : journal of the Australasian Academy of Critical Care Medicine — doi:10.1016/j.ccrj.2026.100215
Abstract licence: CC BY
Explanation generated by Synthesis from the abstract — it is not the original paper.