ICU Bed Designing and Space Issues

·

Space per bed has been recommended from 125 to 150 sq ft area per bed in the patient care area or the room of the patient

recommendation has placed it even higher up to 250 sq ft per bed. In addition there should be 100 to 150% extra spac to accommodate nursing station, storage, patient movement area, equipment area, doctors and nurses rooms and toilet.

·      However in Indian circumstances after reviewing and feed back from various ICUs in our country

·      it may be satisfactory to suggest an area of 100 to 125 sq ft be provided in patient care area for comfortable working with a critically sick patient where all the paraphernalia including monitoring systems, Ventilators & other machines like bedside X-ray will have to be placed around the patient. Bedside procedures like Central lines, Intubation, Tracheostomy, ICD insertion and RRT are common. It may be prudent to make one or two bigger rooms or area which may be utilised for patients who may undergo big bedside procedures like ECMO, RRT etc and has large number Gadgets attached to them.

·      10 % (one to two) rooms may be designated isolation rooms where immunocompromised patients may be kept, these rooms may have 20% extra space than other rooms.

·      The planners may think about, if they are thinking of introducing newer technologies in their ICU like ECMO, Nitric Oxide and Xenon clearance etc. Do they need Lamellar flow for specific patient population in their ICUs. This will be highly specific for High end up ICUs and is not recommended in routine Provisions may be kept open for such options in future.

·