For decades, the belief in the critical care community was that survival alone was a good outcome, and although that remains relatively true, it is also clear that survivors of critical illness face numerous debilitating symptoms, physical and neuropsychological morbidities, and functional impairments that require long-term management. As both the number of survivors and recognition of the burden of survivorship have increased significantly over the last 25 years, clinicians and researchers have paid considerably more attention to outcomes beyond mortality. The late 1990s and the early 2000s witnessed a period of significant growth in recognition of and research interest in long-term outcomes after critical illness. Major scientific meetings included significant content on survivorship following critical illness, particularly after the 2002 Brussels Roundtable issued a call to improve critical care research by investigating long-term, patient-centered outcomes beyond mortality alone. The field took a significant leap forward in 2010, when the term post-intensive care syndrome (PICS) was coined to describe the impairments in physical, cognitive, and mental health arising after a critical illness and persisting beyond hospital discharge. Although important in focusing the field, the definition of PICS does not address severity, duration, or impact on other domains of health.