More Money for Critical Care

2 October 2000

This winter the West Suffolk Hospital will have more staff, more beds and more equipment thanks to an additional £1.44m from the government's modernisation fund.

The money will be used to open and staff additional critical care beds including; an extra intensive care bed in the Intensive Therapy Unit (ITU) increasing the number from five to six; three new high dependency beds, one in ITU and two in the recovery unit; and six progressive care beds on a medical ward. The eventual aim is to create a dedicated six bedded High Dependency Unit in 2001/2002.

"The extra beds will provide flexibility to cope with peaks in demand for emergency admissions and raise the quality of care for very sick patients," said Amanda Skull, Director of Operations for the West Suffolk Hospitals NHS Trust.

“The investment will also reduce the number of occasions when intensive care patients have to be transferred and help to reduce the number of times that urgent elective operations are cancelled owing to the lack of available intensive care beds." she said.

A successful recruitment campaign and internal promotions has put the trust on target to staff the newly funded critical care beds in time for the winter.

A Critical Care Professional Development Nurse has been appointed to support the complex educational and clinical skill development needs of both existing and newly appointed staff to ITU, HDU and recovery over the winter period.

In addition two Critical Care Skills Nurse Trainers have joined the Trust to work with staff on the general medical and surgical wards to help with the management of acutely ill patients, promoting consistency and continuity of high-quality patient-focused care no matter where the patients are in the hospital.

Plans for the winter also include opening a 21 bedded medical ward in November and enhancing the number of nurses on general medical and surgical wards. Staffing these areas, and wards which will be depleted by the developments in critical care, posed a problem with the current national shortage of nurses and the trust had to look abroad to recruit.

In the past the trust has successfully recruited nurses from the Philippines, Canada, the West Indies and South Africa.

On 11 October, 34 nurses will be arriving from the Philippines - 24 will go to the West Suffolk Hospital in Bury St Edmunds and 10 to Walnuttree Hospital in Sudbury.

For the first three months the nurses, who are qualified to degree level, will work under supervision so they can become familiar with the new health care system. Following completion of the adaptation course successful candidates will be registered with the United Kingdom Central Council (UKCC) for nurses.

Editor's notes

ITU beds are used for critically ill patients, who need life support equipment, including a ventilator, and one to one nursing by specially trained staff. Patients may come into ITU as an emergency hospital admission or following major planned surgery which requires them to be in intensive care after the operation.

High dependency beds are for patients who are not critically ill but who still require intensive monitoring and a high level of specialist medical input and nursing care.

Progressive care beds are for patients who require higher levels of nursing care than is available on the general wards. The aim is to stop patients needing an HDU or ITU bed.