All you need to know about an ICU- Intensive Care Unit
Hospital’s Intensive Care Unit (ICU) is a specialized division that offers care for critically ill patients who need continuous monitoring and intensive medical treatment. A multidisciplinary team of healthcare professionals trained in critical care medicine works in the ICU.
Following are some key points to know about the ICU:
1. Purpose: The main purpose/objective of an intensive care unit is to provide specialized treatment to patients who have life-threatening illnesses or need close observation and advanced life support. It is designed to provide all the life-saving things to patients with severe illnesses or deadly injuries.
2. Critical Care Team: The ICU has a committed group of medical experts, including doctors who are specialized in critical care medicine, nurses, respiratory therapists, anesthetists, pharmacists, and other specialists. This multidisciplinary team works together to give intensive care to the patients in ICU.
3. Patient Monitoring: ICU patients’ vital signs, including heart rate, blood pressure, oxygen saturation, and breathing rate, are regularly monitored using advanced equipments. In order to evaluate organ function, monitoring systems also record other data such as pressure inside the skull, cardiac output, and urine output, oxygen saturation etc.
4. Intensive Nursing Care: ICU nurses are essential for the monitoring of patients, drug administration, equipment management, and care coordination. They are extensively trained in critical care and offer round-the-clock care to critical patients. As per NABH, we need to train our staff for ACLS (advanced cardiovascular life support) & BCLS (basic cardiovascular life support) to manage the critical patients.
5. Specialized Equipment: ICUs are fitted with advanced life support devices, including ventilators to help with breathing, cardiac monitors to keep an eye on heart function, defibrillators, Infusion pumps to administer medications precisely, arterial and central venous catheters, bed-side USG devices, point-of-care diagnostic equipment, and continuous renal replacement therapy (CRRT) machines may all fall under this category
6. Infection Control: As per Quality council of India, for the ICU patients strict infection control procedures are followed. This involves hand hygiene, strict cleaning and disinfection procedures, isolation precautions, guidelines.
7. Family support: ICUs understand the value of offering patients’ families assistance when their loved ones are critically ill. Many ICUs offer support services like social workers, have specific locations for families to wait, and regularly inform families about patients’ conditions.
8. ICU triage: When there is a higher demand for ICU beds than the actual beds available, then the patient is given priority according to the severity of their conditions and the probability that they would be benefited from ICU treatment. Triage decisions are made by a group of healthcare experts in accordance with established standards and moral precepts.
9. Post-ICU Care: Depending on the patient’s needs, when their health is stabilized, they may be moved to a lower level of care, such as a step-down unit or a general ward. Some intensive care units (ICUs) also feature special post-ICU care and rehabilitation programs that assist patients in healing and regaining their normal functioning.
