Design, organization and staffing of the intensive care unit

The location, size, organization and staffing of crtical care facilties should be carefully planned to take into account the types of patients it will serve, the levels of care required, existing demand and likely future demands. Health Building Note (HBN) No. 57 gives precise detail of the functional, design and engineering requirements for new critical care facilities. Comprehensive Critical Care, published in 2000, provides direction and advice on issues around organization and staffing. Though not produced as a National Service Framework, it makes key recommendations about the need for a ‘critical care delivery group’, medical staff trained in intensive care medicine, levels of patient dependency, collection of data for audit purposes and other operational aspects of intensive care. It also gives a time frame for the introduction of these measures.