Christmas came early for neurosurgeon Dr. David Clarke.
"On Monday Dec. 5, we had our first patients come in to this brand new unit,” he says.
The new neurosurgical Intermediate Care Unit, or IMCU, at the QEII Health Sciences Centre is state of the art. It provides care for patients who require close neurological monitoring.
“People who have brain surgery or complex spine surgery will typically spend a night in this unit and then will often go home sometimes the next day or to the ward the next day,” Dr. Clarke tells CTV News.
The unit also houses patients from the emergency room after a traumatic head or spinal cord injury and those leaving intensive care.
“So people who are transitioning in their care from requiring very intensive and as part of the recovery now are moving to a less acute care situation, but still require close monitoring,” Dr. Clarke says.
The old unit was just a regular four bed hospital room.
“There was two nurses for the four patients. Very, very tight quarters,” says RN Laura Croft. “You could be working on a patient on one bed and bumping into the bed that’s behind you through the curtain.”
Croft says the new unit is a major improvement, upping the number of beds from four to six and each patient has their own private room.
“It promotes their healing. It’s a quiet environment, less stimulating for them which is what generally our patients need who have a brain surgery or procedure done,” says Croft.
The privacy also helps patients cope in what Croft calls some of their darkest days.
“It provides them with an opportunity for their family to be in with them, for it to be quiet, comforting, but we’re still able to closely monitor them.”
Dr. Clarke says infection control is greatly improved in this new setting and the new unit allows them to provide the best and most efficient care. Capacity related cancellations are expected to drop by over 80 per cent.
