Intensive-Care Units

Overview

The concept behind ICUs has a long history. Florence Nightingale (1820–1910), while serving as a nurse during the Crimean War, separated out the severely injured soldiers from those with minor injury or illness; this practice of triaging allowed the nurses to monitor the seriously wounded patients more closely. During the polio epidemic in the 1940s and 1950s, patients required continuous surveillance and assistance. As a result, many specialized units were established at hospitals to provide these patients with the appropriate care they needed. William Mosenthal, a surgeon at Mary Hitchcock Memorial Hospital in Lebanon, New Hampshire, is credited with establishing the first ICU in the United States (in 1955) that coordinated nursing care and the use of medical equipment in one place for critically ill patients. Today, ICUs are the standard of care for patients with life-threatening diseases and injuries.

Medical Team

The ICU medical team is composed of clinicians from a variety of disciplines, including physicians, nurses, respiratory therapists, pharmacists, and other allied health professionals. These staff members work together to provide advanced medical care to patients. The medical team receives advanced training and possesses specialized skills to care for critically ill patients.

Intensive-care specialists, called intensivists, are board certified in a specialized area, such as surgery or internal medicine, and they have received additional training and certification in critical care. While open ICUs allow for any attending physician with admitting privileges at the hospital to serve as the physician of record and to direct the patient's care, closed ICUs require that an intensivist serve as the physician of record.

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