The Critical Care Unit

The critical care department is a ward within our hospital that cares for patients whose conditions are life-threatening and need constant, close monitoring and support from equipment and medication to keep normal body functions going. Due to the specialist treatments and the constant monitoring that patients require on critical care, it has a higher level of staffing, with most patients having 1:1 care. The staff who work here are highly trained in caring for the most severely ill patients.

The equipment in a critical care area can seem frightening at first. It is common for patients to be connected to several different machines or devices if they are critically ill. At times it may be noisy from the beeps of the machines. As patients recover the equipment is slowly removed as it is no longer needed.