Unit rationale, description and aim
Intensive care nursing requires rapid decision-making, advanced clinical judgment, and the ability to provide holistic support to patients and families during critical illness. This unit builds the specialist capabilities needed to deliver culturally responsive, equitable, family- and people-centred care in diverse intensive care settings. It emphasises collaborative practice and shared decision-making as core components of safe, coordinated, and ethical care.
Students will examine complex ethical issues—such as end-of-life decision-making, treatment burden, and constraints on autonomy—through critical engagement with contemporary evidence and clinical scenarios. The unit also fosters reflective insight into the leadership role of the intensive care nurse, highlighting responsibilities in guiding evidence-based practice, upholding professional standards, and advocating for patients in high-stakes environments.
The aim of this unit is to support students to integrate advanced theoretical knowledge with clinical reasoning to address the challenges of modern intensive care practice. On completion of the unit, students will be able to contribute confidently to interprofessional teams, respond to ethical and clinical complexity, and lead safe, people-centred improvements in intensive care nursing.
Campus offering
No unit offerings are currently available for this unit.Learning outcomes
To successfully complete this unit you will be able to demonstrate you have achieved the learning outcomes (LO) detailed in the below table.
Each outcome is informed by a number of graduate capabilities (GC) to ensure your work in this, and every unit, is part of a larger goal of graduating from ACU with the attributes of insight, empathy, imagination and impact.
Explore the graduate capabilities.
Critically apply principles of interprofessional c...
Learning Outcome 01
Critically evaluate complex ethical problems, info...
Learning Outcome 02
Critically examine and justify the leadership role...
Learning Outcome 03
Critically evaluate and apply evidence to inform c...
Learning Outcome 04
Content
Topics will include:
- Key Concepts in Advanced Intensive Care Nursing Practice
- Introduction to Advanced Practice Nursing (APN)
- Role of the specialist intensive care nurse
- Professional identity, ACCCN standards, and professional development
- Translating evidence into practice collaboration (IPE), communication, and shared decision-making (SDM)
- Technology, management and pathways in Intensive Care Nursing
- Innovations in intensive care technology
- Organisation and management of an intensive care unit
- Pathways to other nursing roles
- Key Concepts in Evidence-Based Practice in Intensive Care Nursing
- 5As of EBP
- Translating evidence into practice
- Barriers and enablers in integrating evidence into practice
- Critical appraisal
- Ethical practice in Intensive Care Setting
- Health professionals’ codes of professional conduct
- Health professionals’ codes of ethical conduct
- Ethical principles and the law
- Application of ethical principles to the care of the critically ill
- Informed consent and surrogate decision making
- Confidentiality
- Cultural safety
- Truth telling
- Framework for resolving ethical problems/decision-making principles
- Clinical Governance and harm mitigation in Intensive Care
- Practice standards for specialist critical care nurses (ACCCN)
- NSQHS standards
- Clinical practice guidelines
- Resuscitation and life support
- Cardiac arrest
- Resuscitation systems and processes
- Basic life support (CPR)
- Evaluation during resuscitation
- Defibrillation
- Advanced life support (ALS) (airway management & medication administration)
- ECMO
- Post-resuscitation care
- Special considerations during resuscitation (family presence, ceasing CPR)
- Patient deterioration and resuscitation
- People and Family-centred care in the ICU
- Interprofessional collaboration
- Communication
- Shared decision making
- Cultural safety and cultural responsiveness
- Needs of family during critical illness
- Working with culturally and linguistically diverse patients and families
- Care considerations for complex and/or diverse populations
- Obstetric
- Paediatric
- Bariatric
- Neurodiverse
- Gender diverse
- Spiritual and religious considerations
- End of life Care & Bereavement in Intensive Care Nursing
- Ethical, physical, psychological and psychosocial impacts
- End of life decision making
- Withdrawing and withholding treatment
- Patient comfort and palliative care
- People/family centred care
- Withdrawal of mechanical ventilation
- Cultural competency/linguistically diverse patients and families
- Spiritual and religious considerations
- Voluntary assisted dying
- Moral distress among caregivers and staff
- Organ Donation
- Types of donations
- Regulations and management
- Nursing responsibilities
- Organ donor care
- Donations after cardiac death
- Leadership, Wellbeing and Self Care in Advanced Intensive Care Practice
- Leadership and mentorship in APN roles
- Clinical decision-making and autonomy
- Recognising burnout and compassion fatigue
- Impact on clinical decision-making and patient safety
- Strategies for resilience, peer support, and reflective practice
Assessment strategy and rationale
The assessment strategy uses two scaffolded written assignments to develop advanced clinical reasoning, interprofessional collaboration and shared decision‑making, ethical analysis, leadership, and evidence‑based practice in intensive care nursing. Assessment Task 1 introduces critical analysis through an ethical dilemma, requiring students to apply collaborative and shared decision‑making principles to deliver culturally responsive, people‑ and family‑centred care. This task strengthens high‑level ethical reasoning and the ability to inform context‑responsive solutions to complex care needs.
The second assessment task requires students to provide a comprehensive case analysis that integrates advanced knowledge, critical evaluation of evidence, and justification of leadership actions in complex clinical contexts. Students apply research to inform context‑responsive, evidence‑based interventions and articulate the advanced clinical nurse’s role in advocating for safe, ethical practice.
The scaffolded approach reflects AQF Level 8 expectations by emphasising synthesis of theory and practice, autonomy in clinical decision‑making, and scholarly engagement with complex healthcare challenges. To pass the unit, students must demonstrate achievement of every unit learning outcome and obtain a minimum mark of 50% in graded units.
Overview of assessments
Assessment Task 1: Written Assignment This asses...
Assessment Task 1: Written Assignment
This assessment involves analysing a real-world case with an ethical dilemma. Critically examine clinical practices, ethical principles, and interprofessional collaboration. Evaluate the shared decision-making process and whether culturally safe, equitable, people- and family-centred outcomes were achieved.
30%
Assessment Task 2: Written Assignment This writ...
Assessment Task 2: Written Assignment
This written case study involves analysing the care of an intensive care patient with a variation in health status. It assesses the ability to critically evaluate literature, analyse and justify the advanced practice nurse’s role in harm minimisation, quality and safety, propose evidence-based, culturally responsive interventions aligned with people-centred care and shared decision-making.
70%
Learning and teaching strategy and rationale
This online unit adopts active learning strategies to support students in developing advanced clinical reasoning, ethical decision-making, and evidence-based practice. Learning activities are designed to reflect the complexity of real-world healthcare environments, where adaptability and autonomy are essential. Students will engage with culturally safe, equitable, and people-centred care through structured online discussions and reflective activities. The unit highlights the specialist intensive care nurse’s role in interprofessional collaboration, risk assessment, harm mitigation, and leadership in evidence-informed practice, aligned with the National Safety and Quality Health Service (NSQHS) Standards and ACCCN standards. The flexible delivery model ensures accessibility for working professionals while providing expert academic support. Collaborative online discussions foster shared learning, professional networking, and the development of a forward-thinking, people-centred nursing practice.