An official document available with this scribe reveals that the total number of intensive care units in PIMS especially in the Anaesthesia Department, Centre for Liver Disease and Transplant, PIMS Children Hospital and Radiology Department is inadequate considering the hospital's tremendous workload and there is an urgent need to enhance the number of beds in this Institute. Most of the currents ventilators and other related items have outlived their life and need replacement.
The ICU in the Anesthesia Department of PIMS began in 1987 with a ventilator and a monitor on each of the 10 beds. The ICU catered for both Surgical and Medical patients. The addition of specialties and theatre in the Department has increased the workload of the ICU, that is why a separate medical ICU was established with 9 beds initially in the medical ward and then in a separate unit in the Anesthesia Department.
At the moment from the Surgical ICU 3 bed space was given to the Liver Surgery Patients HDU (High Dependency Unit) and one bed space retained for Dialysis for patients on ventilator. Currently Surgical ICU has 9 bed services with 4 ventilators in working order and five out of order with 8 working monitors and the Medical ICU has 9 beds with 8 ventilators and monitors.
Documents show that daily 10-15 calls are received for admission in Surgical ICU or Medical ICU of the Anesthesia Department but due to scarcity of beds only 1-2 beds are available after discharge or death of patients. Documents reveal that at Centre for Liver Disease and Transplant, out of two ventilators only one is functional while the other one is under repair and three cardiac monitors are available there. In the PIMS Children Hospital, only 9 beds and 7 ventilators are available in spite of the high burden of patients.
Documents show that the PIMS Radiology department is not equipped with a sufficient number of machines and staff. The MRI in the PIMS Radiology Department was installed in 2007. The department trained the already existing staff to run the MRI machine and it cannot be run in the evening due to shortage of staff. In the morning an average of 15 MRIs are performed as each study requires at least 45 minutes.