Pediatric intensive care in South Africa: an account of making optimum use of limited resources at the Red Cross War Memorial Children's Hospital*.

Objective: To develop explicit criteria for patient admission in order to optimize utilization of PICU facilities in the face of increasing demand outstripping resources.

Setting: Multidisciplinary PICU in a university-affiliated referral hospital in Cape Town, South Africa.

Design: Retrospective description of policy development and implementation

Patients: All patients referred to the Paediatric Intensive Care Unit of the Red Cross War Memorial Children's Hospital.