Paediatric intensive care units (PICUs) are often portrayed as clinical environments in which technical mastery must coexist with emotional detachment. In medical and sociological discourse, high-acuity settings are frequently framed as sites of burn-out, moral distress and dehumanisation, where protocols risk eclipsing personhood.
‘Everything in PICU is r2’, a consultant remarked during my first week, before launching into an impromptu tutorial. She explained how small differences in cannula gauge dramatically alter flow; how a single unit of free-flowing fluid could be fatal to a neonate with a circulating volume of just 300 mL; how the same principle governed endotracheal tubes, chest drains and…