Nearly 80% of all Americans will experience a critical illness or injury, either as the patient, family member or friend of a patient. Often, these critical cases require being treated in a hospital's Intensive Care Unit.

Volunteer Elly Hoar says that "People in the ICU are very, very ill. They need constant care."

Cardiologist David Bailey says that constant care is given in the ICU unit by healthcare professionals who work around-the-clock, treating patients 24 hours a day, seven days a week. "Intensive care really means intensive care, you have very close viligence with a lot of vital signs monitoring at a level of nursing and physician care appropriate for what's going on."

Because the ICU specializes in major medical, cardiac or surgical illnesses or injuries, certain rules are extremely important to ensure quality care. This includes rules that may seem trivial-like the fact that no flowers are allowed in this unit. Patient Safety Officer Julie Pike says, "Sometimes flowers have hidden insects or you know, may spread infection so we prefer that they not be allowed to be brought into the ICU."

Julie also says that when a family member is in the ICU, you obviously want to visit your loved one as much as possible. But it's important to remember that although the visiting hours in the ICU may seem limiting, they're set with the best intentions for both you and the patient. "The nurses do try to organize their work around that, so the time that you're in the ICU with the patient is time that you can spend with the patient rather than you have to stand back while they're doing their work. So it is a way of organizing their work so that you can spend time with them."

Most intensive care units have stricter visiting hours and restrictions than the general patient population, so check with your hospital before visiting someone in this unit.

Patients are rarely admitted directly to the critical care unit. Rather, they are usually admitted from the emergency room or surgical area where they are first given care and stabilized.