General intensive care medicine

General Intensive Care Medicine enables the performance of complex operations, providing monitoring and intensive postoperative care. It is also deputed to treat patients in critical condition due to respiratory failure, sepsis and septic shock, multi-organ failure, and polytrauma.

General Information

In Intensive Care Medicine, patients are admitted who require special surveillance and care because they have diseases that may endanger their vital functions. For this reason, devices and appliances are used to monitor and care for patients in the best possible way; monitors are also used to monitor cardiac activity, blood pressure, respiratory rate, blood oxygenation and other more complex vital parameters.

Sometimes, those admitted to intensive care medicine require more or less deep sedation (treatment that tranquilizes or puts them to sleep); in these cases it may then appear that the patient is asleep or does not understand what is around them. In reality, it is possible that there is an albeit partial understanding of what is going on, and, for this reason, EOC staff engage in talking, explaining, and touching the patient as if the patient can sense their presence. Everyone who visits the patient is invited to this behavior.

Some patients require support in their respiratory function; for this, machines connected to the patient's respiratory system through special masks or through a tube placed in the airway are used. In the latter case, the patient is usually treated with pain-relieving and sedative drugs that allow the patient to tolerate it without discomfort.

In such an often high-tech environment, the EOC staff always tries to put the patient and his or her family at the center of their professionalism, accompanying and helping those who live through a moment that is often fraught with worry and uncertainty. At the center of action must always remain the patient and family.

Patient care

Admission and patient stay

Admission involves anursing reception designed to set up monitoring, collect initial information, and establish contact between the charge nurse and the patient. In parallel, the physician conducts the admission visit, initial data collection, and therapy setting. It is at this stage that the name of a reference person is requested to be contacted in case of need. Then, the necessary diagnostic and therapeutic interventions are determined and the tasks of the team are planned. During the stay, the patient's health status is constantly monitored and evaluated. This explains the presence of equipment and a complex computer system. This equipment ensures close monitoring of vital functions. Any abnormality is signaled by an audible alarm and promptly analyzed by the nursing staff, which takes immediate action if necessary.

Visiting hours

Patient visits follow different rules and schedules that are shared and defined directly with caregivers.

Transfer

When care provided exclusively by the EOC Intensive Care Service is no longer needed for the patient, the physician in charge decides on transfer. The patient, and if necessary his or her family members, are informed about this decision. Transfers can take place over a 24-hour period, although preferably during the day.

Advance directives

It is the EOC's obligation to respect the patient's wishes regarding the medical care to be provided, even if he or she is unable to express himself or herself during his or her stay. It is important to inform the EOC staff promptly if a document with advance directives has been drawn up or if the patient has designated a therapeutic representative.

Pamphlet for patients

Useful information for patients who are taken care of at our hospital sites by the EOC Intensive Care Medicine Service.

Doctors

Locations

Intensive medicine wards are operational in the four major Ticino hospitals.

The English version of this page was created with the aid of automatic translation tools and may contain errors and omissions.
The original version is the page in Italian.