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Welcome to the new home of Providence I.C.U. serving
St. Paul's Hospital and Mt. St. Joseph's Hospital in Vancouver, B.C.
Please browse our content for useful health-care related information,
upcoming events in our calendar, or many of our in-service videos.
The Intensive Care Unit At Providence Health Care
The Intensive Care Unit (ICU) at Providence Health Care (PHC) provides leadership and innovation in the delivery of critical care, research and teaching. Our multidisciplinary team provides compassionate and respectful care to all our patients and their families.
The ICU is staffed with an award winning team that
was nationally recognized in 2006 with a 3M
Award for their work in sepsis. We treat a wide
variety of patients in a dynamic setting. Our
clinicians are recognized as being world
leaders in both the clinical setting as well as in
research. Areas of clinical focus are in sepsis
management, acute respiratory failure, renal
failure and patients with multi-system organ
failure.
The ICU provides care for various patients both
at a tertiary/quaternary level and a community
level. We accomplish this by having one ICU on
two sites. St. Paul’s is a teaching hospital and
Mount Saint Joseph is a community hospital
that provides care to a culturally diverse group
of patients. The Intensive Care Unit (ICU) at Providence Health Care (PHC) provides leadership and innovation in the delivery of critical care, research and teaching. Our multidisciplinary team provides compassionate and respectful care to all our patients and their families.
Our facilities include capacity for:
• 19 ICU beds at St. Paul’s Hospital
• 6 ICU beds at Mount Saint Joseph
Nursing Excellence
We offer a challenging work experience with opportunities to learn and to enhance your skills. Our nurses are members of a team that includes doctors, respiratory therapists, social workers, physiotherapists, pharmacists, dieticians, research coordinators and pastoral care workers. Our environment is supportive and we are known for our professionalism and humanity. St. Paul’s Hospital is an internationally recognized teaching hospital affiliated with the University of British Columbia, British Columbia Institute of Technology and other teaching institutions. There is support provided by clinical nurse leaders, nurse educator and an operations leader. Providence Health Care supports learning and specialty nursing education by assisting with the funding for nurses acquiring post- graduate critical care training.
Download an Adobe PDF Fact Sheet
We offer a challenging work experience with opportunities to learn and to enhance your skills. Our nurses are members of a team that includes doctors, respiratory therapists, social workers, physiotherapists, pharmacists, dieticians, research coordinators and pastoral care workers. Our environment is supportive and we are known for our professionalism and humanity. St. Paul’s Hospital is an internationally recognized teaching hospital affiliated with the University of British Columbia, British Columbia Institute of Technology and other teaching institutions. There is support provided by clinical nurse leaders, nurse educator and an operations leader. Providence Health Care supports learning and specialty nursing education by assisting with the funding for nurses acquiring post- graduate critical care training.
Download an Adobe PDF Fact Sheet
July 23, 2008
July 6, 2008
Comparison of Inhaled Nitric Oxide and Inhaled Aerosolized Prostacyclin
Comparison of Inhaled Nitric Oxide and Inhaled Aerosolized Prostacyclin in the Evaluation of
Heart Transplant Candidates With Elevated Pulmonary Vascular Resistance*
Blood Product administration
Resource links for Moral Distress literature
Moral distress is an all too common and frustrating aspect of critical care nursing. Just consider the following case scenarios.
April 10, 2008
Endocrine Dysfunction in the I.C.U.
March 21, 2008
INDICATIONS AND ASSESSMENT FOR HEART TRANSPLANT
NT-pro B-Type Natriuretic Peptide (NT-pro BNP): Evidence is emerging to suggest that measurement of BNP as a prognostic marker may be a powerful tool. The St Paul’s Hospital Heart Transplant Program uses NT-proBNP (a form of BNP) in conjunction with the measurements outlined in CCS Guidelines to aid in transplant listing or delisting decisions. Currently, a level of 1,500pg/ml has been identified. Levels greater than this has been associated with significantly increased mortality in heart failure patients[2-5]
March 20, 2008
EgyDoctors.net
Interesting site for:
The information provided here is for educational and informational purposes only...
It shouldn't be used in either diagnosis or treatment .
Medicine
LINK
Laryngoscopic Trachea vs Esophagus
February 11, 2008
Current Research by our I.C.U. physicians.
The physicians in the I.C.U. at St. Paul's Hospital are engaged in world leading research. We will be adding articles for the staff's benefit to inform them as to what these physicians are currently working on.
- Inhaled beta-2 agonist salbutamol and acute lung injury: an
association with improvement in acute lung injury.
- Relative value of multiple plasma biomarkers
as risk factors for coronary artery disease and death
in an angiography cohort.
- MACGT: multi-dimensional automated clustering
genotyping tool for analysis of microarray-based
mini-sequencing data.
- Vasopressin: The preferred vasopressor in sepsis?..Not today, not yet.
- CardiacICAM-1mediatesleukocyte-dependent decreasedventricular
contractilityinendotoxemicmice.
- Toll-like receptor stimulation in cardiomyoctes decreases contractility and
initiates an NF-κB dependent inflammatory response.
- Protein C 1641 AA is associated with decreased survival and more organ dysfunction in severe sepsis.
Download an Adobe PDF of this entry
- Fibrinogen-beta gene haplotype is associated with mortality in sepsis.
- Myocardial hypoxia-inducible HIF-1α VEGF, and GLUT1 gene expression is
associated with microvascular and ICAM-1 heterogeneity during endotoxemia.
January 28, 2008
De-Mystifying The Oscillator
GENERAL INFORMATION:
High Frequency Oscillatory Ventilation (HFO) is a ventilatory strategy that employs very small tidal volumes (often less than anatomic dead space) combined with very fast rates or frequencies (where 1 Hertz or Hz = 60cycles/min).
The Sensormedics 3100B high frequency oscillator consists of a continuous positive airway pressure circuit with an integrated motor-driven piston/diaphragm for generating the oscillations. There is active inspiration as well as active expiration on the oscillator.
Gas transport during HFO is thought to be as a result of several factors: molecular diffusion, direct alveolar ventilation (bulk gas flow to the proximal alveoli), net convective transport caused by asymmetric gas-velocity profiles, improved gas mixing caused by Taylor dispersion in turbulent flow, pendelluft, and cardiogenic mixing.
In HFO, alveolar ventilation (and thus CO2 elimination) is dependent on frequency and tidal volume, but relatively independent of lung volume. Oxygenation is “uncoupled” from ventilation; that is, it is proportional to mean airway pressure and lung volume.
And an interesting article from Stanford:
November 12, 2007
Drug Monographs
Drug Monographs
PLEASE BE AWARE THAT THESE ARE PROVIDED EXTERNALLY FROM LONDON HEALTH SCIENCES AS A REFERENCE ONLY.
The
following intravenous drug monographs are for medications commonly used
in critical care. If the drug you are interested in locating is not
listed below AND you are INSIDE London Health
Sciences Centre, please check the LHSC Parenteral Drug Administration
Index by selecting the " PDAM" link on the navigational bar. Generic
drugs are listed in lower case, trade name drugs begin with an upper
case letter.
November 9, 2007
Orientation Manual for ICU House Staff
October 19, 2007
MRSA, Staph, Staff, Mersa, Methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus Symptoms & Treatment
Interesting information regarding hospital workers and MRSA.
Between October 2001 and February 2002, 324 healthcare workers were screened for methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) by nose and throat swabs. A positive finding led to activation of a standardised control programme for the affected person who was immediately excluded from work.
(1 in 6 Hospital staff are MRSA carriers)
Check out the link here
October 18, 2007
Scleroderma Lung Disease: A Common Phenomenon in a Rare Disease
Introduction
Scleroderma is a rare disease of the connective tissue in which most, if not all, patients have lung involvement. Scleroderma lung disease includes interstitial lung disease, pulmonary vascular disease and bronchiolitis. Although in the majority of patients scleroderma lung disease is asymptomatic, it is a major cause of morbidity and mortality.Because of the small number of patients with this disease, the treatment of scleroderma, generally, and of its associated lung disease, specifically, have not been well defined by controlled trials. With the current limited knowledge, a reasonable approach is to treat progressive interstitial lung disease with immunosuppressive drugs such as cyclophosphamide and corticosteroids. Those patients with pulmonary vascular disease have a poor prognosis and therapy is currently limited. However, new treatment strategies are on the horizon, the most promising of which are the recent development of locally administered therapies such as inhaled iloprost†, a prostaglandin analogue.
† In the US, nitric oxide is only available on a compassionate use basis.
Continue reading "Scleroderma Lung Disease: A Common Phenomenon in a Rare Disease" »