Intensive Care Unit Facility Design

Deepak Venkatesh Agarkhed, General Manager –Engineering,Facilities & Quality, Sakra World Hospital, gives an insight about certain parameters which should be followed while designing an ICU

The intensive care unit(ICU), designated a sigh risk area from infection prevention point of view, has a concentration of lifesaving medical aid and nursing care for patients who are critically ill. The engineering controls both during design, commissioning and operation play a major role. The designer of an ICU should not only have insight of clinical work flow and protocol but have a sound knowledge of engineering controls. The design consultant should capture requirement of patients, intensivists, surgeon, nurses, technicians and infection control officer and in-house engineers (both general and clinical) for efficient design of ICU. The fine balancing act of quality, cost and time factors during design planning and execution will yield better results to hospitals on a long-term basis. Any flaws in ICU engineering control may result in serious compromise in patient care as evident from above mentioned examples.

The following facility related points are required to be considered as part of facility planning and further engineering controls during operation.

Space programme

The guidelines for ICU design should be based on criteria set by ISCCM, India given below.

Level I, six to eight beds — small district hospital, small private nursing homes, rural centres.

Level II, six to eight beds — larger general hospital

Level III, 10 to 16 beds-tertiary level hospitals

The new level III ICU are further planned based on type/usage of ICU i.e. general or speciality-based like medical, cardiac, neurosurgical, transplant, paediatric. The location of ICU should be close to the operation theatre, imaging diagnostic services and laboratory.