The new 12-bed high-acuity unit at Nanaimo Regional General Hospital is set to begin taking patients by the end of the month.
On Friday, Aug. 22, stakeholders went on a tour of the new space, which will serve to support patients who have critical care needs but do not require the ICU.
The new unit, which includes dialysis capability, monitoring equipment, private bathrooms, ceiling lifts and more, came at a price tag of $18.5 million split between the province, the Nanaimo Regional Hospital District and the Nanaimo and District Hospital Foundation.
This opening marks completion of the final phase of the $60-million Nanaimo critical care project. The earlier phase included an intensive-care unit that opened in 2023, with a cost of $41.6 million.
"What it means is those patients who would have not been able to be serviced within the logistic environment of the critical care, which is 12 beds, are being in a temporary location in our recovery room right now," said Kelly McColm, ICU, HAU and respiratory therapy manager. "Those patients are actually going to be in these state-of-the-art rooms, which makes a huge difference operationally."
High-acuity patients are currently being served in an eight-bed temporary pop-up high-acuity unit which was opened in the back of the emergency department during the COVID-19 pandemic. Jane Marriott, high-acuity unit clinical nurse leader, said the hospital has also had to utilize the post-anesthesia care unit in the past.
She said the new unit has "transformed the way" staff members are able to deliver care and work as a team.
"We have space. We can walk around our patients, we can easily get them up with our new ceiling lifts, we can lift them off the bed – we can put patients into the bathroom, which is unheard of," Marriott said. "We've never been able to do that. We have all of our needs that we need to provide care, we have a computer at the bedside, we have all of our supplies within the room without having to go anywhere else because we have the space to do so."
Sheila Malcolmson, MLA for Nanaimo-Gabriola, said this unit is already having an impact on health-care staff recruitment and retention.
"When we talk with pride about what we are building here in Nanaimo it helps us retain and recruit the vital health-care professionals we need to do this work," she said. "From the bottom of our hearts, on behalf of our government, I want to say, thank you so much to the design team at Island Health who put heart and soul into making sure this space was not only state-of-the-art but also delivering for patients and for families."
The unit is expected to welcome its first patients on Thursday, Aug. 28.
"This was not just one individual, this was multi-layered team members that worked very hard to get this to fruition," Marriott said. "I look back at all the team members who contributed to this project, even in the smallest of ways from our foundation donors, someone who bought a smile cookie, to anyone who has put in all the infrastructure. It is all contributing to better patient care."
