Critical Care Management

Intensive care or critical care is a healthcare speciality that cares those who suffer from life-threatening illness, injury or acute disorders. Many people experience or go through critical illness or injury in their life.

Whenever there is a threat to life or life is in danger owing to a life-threatening incidence, accident or emergency situation – Critical care is provided – whenever an organ function needs to be supported, critical care devices are invoked. The best critical care is provided in specialized & sophisticated intensive care units (ICU). Critical care is not something which is offered only in a particular ICU setting – in contrast, it begins as soon as the patient enters the hospital owing to a serious injury or disease and continues throughout their hospital stay, treatment and then after recovery as well. But, the service is provided by a specialized team of qualified specialists.

The Department of Critical Care at Virinchi Hospitals is a level III centre with an extensive network of Intensive Care Units that provide responsive care for the management of all critically ill patients. The department is staffed by critical care specialists who offer care round the clock, and have access to diagnostic services including diagnostic laboratory and radiology services.

Additionally, critical care is coordinated along with a team of critical care nurses, pharmacists, dietician and other healthcare specialists. All of them, cohesively leverage their expertise to interpret critical information, access the best equipment, provide best service-oriented support to offer the care that leads to the best possible outcomes. Furthermore, the entire critical care team helps patients and their families with several strategies of improving their health and well-being.

Critical Care Nurses

Critical care nurses play a vital role in providing care to the patients and facilitating coordination between all people involved in imparting care to the patient. They continuously monitor patients’ health by communicating his/her health status to the team on a regular basis. Their expertise and round- the-clock monitoring help detect subtle but relevant changes in patient conditions so that complications or worsening health conditions owing to the critical illness can be dealt with quite efficiently in time. The nurses are quite close with the patients’ family and thus act as their well-wishers by being an integral part of their family.

Pharmacist or Clinical Pharmacologist

Clinical pharmacist is a certified specialist who is trained to take care of patients in general as well as critical care settings of a hospital.  A pharmacist is skillful enough in understanding the requirements of patients and working with physicians and nurses to impart collaborative care to the patients by imparting cost-effective and safe medication therapy.

Registered Dietitian

Dietician is an integral part of the critical care team. An ailing person who is recovering from his/her illness needs the support of a dietician for augmenting the nutritional status and promoting recovery at a faster pace.

Patient Care Coordinator

Patient care coordinator works with interdisciplinary and collaborative ICU team, and acts as a link between the patient, the family and the critical care team to ensure smooth delivery of care to the patient at all times. Such professionals have quite good understanding and special knowledge pertaining to care in a critical care set up owing to their professional experience, education, training and association with welfare policies, services and systems.