Our 850-bed, academic, tertiary care hospital uses a four-bed dedicated 'shock room' situated between the Departments of Emergency Medicine and Intensive Care to stabilise all acutely ill patients from outside or inside the hospital before transfer to the intensive care unit or other department. Admitted patients stay a maximum of four hours in the shock room. In this article we describe our experiences using this shock room by detailing the demographic data, including time and source of admission, diagnosis and outcome, for the 2514 patients admitted to the shock room in 2006. The most common reasons for admission were cardiac (33%) and neurological (21%) diagnoses. After diagnosis and initial treatment, 54% of patients were transferred to an intensive care unit or a coronary care unit; 2.5% of patients died in the shock room. The shock room provides a useful area of collaboration between emergency department and intensive care unit staff and enables acutely ill patients to be assessed and treated rapidly to optimise outcomes.