New High Acuity Unit opens at Nanaimo Regional General Hospital for patients with complex care needs
The unit adds 12 new patient beds in private rooms and replaces the eight-bed temporary unit that was set up at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Photo: Lauryn Mackenzie / CHLY 101.7fm
The Nanaimo Regional General Hospital is set to open its newest unit for patients with complex, high-care needs in the central Vancouver Island area.
This Thursday, the NRGH will open its new High Acuity Unit (HAU).
The completion of the HAU marks the final phase of a $60 million initiative to expand and enhance critical care in Nanaimo. The project also included the new 12-bed ICU, which opened in June 2023.
The HAU is designed to help patients with serious health problems, who may need more care than would be provided in a regular ward, but need less care than provided in the ICU.
Each new patient room will feature monitoring equipment, a private bathroom, ceiling lifts, and the capability for dialysis treatment.
CHLY received an early tour of the HAU along with other media, local politicians and Island Health staff.
The unit adds 12 new patient beds in private rooms and replaces the eight-bed temporary unit that was set up at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
Jane Marriott, clinical lead for the high-acuity unit with Island Health, said many of the designs and ideas for the new unit came after managing the aging ICU during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Lesson learned from COVID is that sometimes we need more critical care beds than we may have, and we had to do a lot of navigating in environments that weren't necessarily ideal for critical care patients during COVID, but we did so,” Marriott said. “Now, we are able to do so more readily; we can flip into care for all ICU patients within this department as well.”
As beds in the HAU can be flipped to treat intensive care, that means the hospital can now have up to 24 ICU beds.
Marriott said another aspect they looked at when designing and building this unit was the comfort of both the patients and their loved ones who may visit them.
“The recliner chair can be used by either patients or by families to use. Again, that sense of comfort so that patients' families feel welcome and are also comforted in sometimes a really stressful environment,” she said. “This is not always a fun place to be. No one wants to be here, so we want to make it as soft as it can be when they're here.”
Beds in the new unit will also be able to expand to a double bed, allowing a partner or a loved one to lie with them in the bed.
The new unit will also have a nurses' station, medication room, nourishment centre, physician area, family consult room, and staff washroom.
Sheila Malcolmson, MLA for Nanaimo-Gabriola Island, said this new unit at the hospital will improve healthcare for people in Nanaimo and the rest of the island.
Malcolmson said the upgrades to both the ICU and the HAU came after a review of three ICUs on Vancouver Island in 2013. The report found that the then eight-bed ICU in Nanaimo was one of the most dangerous ICUs in Canada.
“Already, this is having an impact on healthcare worker recruitment and retention, because when we talk with pride about what we are building here in Nanaimo, it helps us retain and recruit the vital healthcare professionals that we need to do this work,” Malcolmson said.
Kelly McColm is a registered nurse and manager of the ICU, HAU, and respiratory care at the NRGH.
She told CHLY this new HAU took her breath away when she first saw it.
“When I walked in here, seeing that it's all been put together here, it's beautiful,” McColm said. “To see 12 more critical care beds is amazing to have now, 24 critical care beds for the central island and for NRGH has been amazing.”
She said that during the heat of the COVID-19 pandemic in the old ICU, they had to split their 21 patients in critical care in different areas of the hospital.
Now the ICU and HAU are connected in the same tower, McColm said, which will allow staff in the two different units to work together more easily.
“So our staff, we work together, we are a collaborative team. Staff will come upstairs and downstairs to take care of patients,” she said. “So actually having us all together is a good strategy for just taking care of these critically ill patients all in one place.”
She said the staff are fully trained in both units, so if a patient’s condition gets worse at the HAU, they can stay in the HAU, rather than being relocated to the ICU.
She said the staff are excited to start work in the new unit
“Compared to our last building, our last area, it's amazing. The rooms are great, and the equipment is brand new,” she said. “We have triple the size of the rooms that we had in the ICU previously, so it's fabulous. We've got a beautiful break room downstairs, an area for people to decompress after we've had a really heavy, patient day.”
Other construction still underway at the Nanaimo Regional General Hospital is the new BC Cancer Centre, which is set to be completed by 2028.
Funding Note: This story was produced with funding support from the Local Journalism Initiative, administered by the Community Radio Fund of Canada.