Starting next week, patients at Nanaimo Regional General Hospital who require intensive care will receive that care in a brand-new ICU.
B.C. Minister of Health Adrian Dix was at NRGH on Monday, June 19, for a press conference announcing the opening of the new 12-bed intensive care unit. The ICU will open to patients Wednesday, June 28.
The unit includes larger single-patient rooms, ceiling-mounted service booms, overhead patient lifts, a medication room and a family consult room.
Dix said that the new ICU expands health-care services for people in Nanaimo and surrounding communities.
“This means better acute care for you and your families. Just to put it in context, it’s three times as large in terms of space as the current ICU is,” he said. “That’s a significant change, not just in the quality of care [but also] the quality of work that all of our staff here are able to provide.”
The current 10-bed ICU was built in 1970 and “is outdated in its space and functionality,” according to the ministry.
“This is absolutely, I think, a major improvement, something that people in this community have called for for a long time,” said Dix. “In the last year, according to the Canadian Institute for Health Information, we added 6.7 per cent more nurses in B.C., thousands of new nurses, compared to our neighbouring province, Alberta, which lost one per cent of their services, which demonstrates when we work together, we can achieve great things.”
Michael Kenyon, lead physician of the ICU, said Nanaimo’s unit is staffed by one of the most experienced ICU teams in the province, and he’s glad there is now an upgraded space for him and his team of health professionals.
“When I walked through that ICU today, the nurse with the least time in our unit [has been there] six years, the nurse with the most time in our unit, about 20 years. That tells you something about morale,” he said. “When there are eight nurses on shift looking after patients, and they haven’t turned over, they’re enjoying the challenge of where they are despite the grim surrounding, and they’re enjoying the work they do.”
A new 12-bed high-acuity unit is also being built at the hospital and is slated to open next summer. The provincial government said the total cost of the new units is $60.1 million with the ICU costing $41.6 million and the HAU costing $18.5 million. The provincial government, the Nanaimo Regional Hospital District and the Nanaimo and District Hospital Foundation are the funding partners.
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