Breathing Circuits: A resource for designing local guidance (The Faculty of Intensive Care Medicine, February 2025)

Summary

The Faculty of Intensive Care Medicine have developed this guidance in response to recurrent safety incidents concerning the connection and reconnection of both invasive and non-invasive breathing circuits. This was created to act as a resource to help in the design of local guidance and visual aids and is intended to be easily adaptable for use by individual units. It was subsequently recommended for this purpose in NHS England's National patient safety alert – risk associated with adult breathing circuits lacking a patent exhalation route, published on the 11 December 2025.