New ICU at Bayview Hospital

Yesterday evening was the official opening and unveiling of the new Intensive Care Unit (ICU) at Bayview Hospital.

Speaking at the opening ceremony, Hospital Administrator, Julie Reid, stated: “Our new two-bedded state-of-the-art Intensive Care Unit is fully equipped with ventilators, cardiac monitors, and all the medical equipment necessary to provide Level Two Intensive Care Unit support to our patients.

“This addition of an Intensive Care Unit at Bayview significantly increases our medical capability, and expands the level of service we can provide, by enabling doctors who practice here at the hospital to perform more complex surgeries.

“More specifically, Bayview Hospital can now cater to those kinds of surgeries which may require post-operative ventilation, and we will now also have the capacity to assist what we call ‘high dependency’ medical patients.”

In turn, she revealed that this would reduce patient transfers from Bayview Hospital as they will now be able to support patients that require ventilation and increased monitoring.

“This important new upgrade to Bayview has involved the conversion of one of our four-bed semi-private rooms into the two-bed Intensive Care Unit facility,” she said.

“In doing so, we have taken the utmost care to ensure that the redevelopment of this part of the hospital is in line with international Intensive Care Unit standards, including some non-touch entry, and a specially designed air-conditioning system.”

Reid noted that this new venture will be led by two ICU consultants, Dr. Dawn Alleyne and Dr. Nigel Farnum. In order to support the consultants, she noted that they retained a special team of experienced emergency and intensive care senior house officers to facilitate the provision of the necessary 24-hour monitoring care to any and all patients within their ICU.

Dr. Alleyne, ICU Consultant and Doctor in General (Internal) Medicine and Respiratory Medicine, gave further information on the specific functions of the new Bayview ICU, adding that much work had been done to educate the hospital staff on ICU protocols.