Critical care is the specialist care given to patients with sudden and potentially reversible life-threatening diseases or injuries. This can include following accidents, operations, severe infections or a coma. Critical care is divided into two areas; intensive care, where the sickest patients are cared for, and high dependency, where patients who are not well enough to return to general wards are cared for.
The Department of Critical Care Medicine (DCCM) is one of the leading critical care units in New Zealand, located on the 8th floor of Auckland City Hospital. We provide intensive and high dependency care for patients over the age of 15 for all conditions except heart, lung and blood vessel surgery. Our specialist areas of intensive care include liver, kidney and pancreas transplantation and neurological conditions. Intensive care for heart, lung and and some vascular surgery is provided by the Cardiothoracic and Vascular Intensive Care Unit.
The unit is open 24 hours-a-day, 365 days-a-year and is staffed by a large team of experienced doctors, nurses and allied health professionals. We have 24 beds in total - 18 are open bed spaces, and the remaining 6 are isolation side rooms. We have over 1400 admissions per year of which 75% are emergency and 25% elective. The median length of stay in DCCM is 1.5 days, however patients may require a prolonged stay.
Patients may be admitted to Critical Care from the emergency department, hospital wards, operating theatre or following transfer from another hospital or intensive care unit.
The Department of Critical Care is staffed by a team of highly experienced and professional doctors and nurses who are supported by other healthcare professionals. Medical care is provided by specialist doctors (intensivists) who are trained to look after very ill patients and doctors training to be specialists in intensive care, anaesthesia, emergency medicine and internal medicine. Most nurses in critical care are also specialised with postgraduate training and qualifications in intensive care. Patients requiring intensive care treatment have a nurse allocated to look after them individually. High dependency patients may be cared for by a nurse who is also looking after another patient. Other essential staff members include physiotherapists, dietitians, pharmacists, radiographers, biomedical technicians alongside other healthcare professionals to help care for these very ill patients.