Our Pediatric Intensive Care Unit or PICU is a 30-bed unit that provides intensive observation and specialized nursing care for critically ill patients from both medicine and surgical services, located in our C.S. Mott Children's Hospital.
Physicians and nurses in the PICU are specially trained to handle this variety of patients and are credentialed in Pediatric Advanced Life Support (PALS) by The American Heart Association. This certification ensures that providers are prepared to handle scenarios where the patient is approaching, or already in, respiratory or cardiac arrest.
The equipment used in the ICU can sustain life but can also increase the risk of infection. As a result of this higher level of risk we work hard to prevent infections; our bloodstream infection rate is low compared to national benchmarks.
Clinicians in the PICU have been leaders in several important quality initiatives, including the National Association of Children's Hospitals & Related Institution's (NACHRI) projects to reduce bloodstream and ventilator-associated infections.
There are sixteen monitored ICU beds, with age ranges from newborn to eighteen years. Many different services admit patients to the PICU including: Pediatric Critical Care Medicine Service, Pediatric Neurosurgery, General Surgery, including trauma, Orthopedic Surgery, ENT, Plastic Surgery, Hematology/Oncology, BMT, Nephrology, Transplant, Cardiothoracic