The new facilities have 24 beds and 11 resuscitation care points, with more spacious and bright spaces.
The architecture has been adjusted to the requirements of the HU-CI project for the humanization of intensive and intermediate care.
The Bellvitge University Hospital has inaugurated this May 3, on the 2nd floor of the main building, a new Unit for Semi-Critical Cardiology Patients that replaces the one located so far on the 4th floor. The new unit occupies about 1,200 m2, more than double the 500 m2 occupied by the previous spaces, and is equipped with the most modern equipment and materials.
The new facilities represent an increase of 4 beds in relation to the existing ones so far. In total, they include 16 beds of semi-critical cardiological patients –6 of which, in single rooms– and 8 post-procedure beds (for patients undergoing hemodynamic or electrophysiological procedures), as well as a resuscitation area with 11 care points.
The new unit will involve major improvements to patient comfort and professional working conditions. The architecture has complied with the requirements of the HU-CI project for the humanisation of intensive and intermediate care, to which the Bellvitge University Hospital is a member. The spaces are much more spacious and bright, with street views. The offices for medical offices, nursing work rooms, administrative and secretarial rooms, changing rooms, and warehouses have been improved. Facilities also include a large waiting room and an information office for relatives. In the technological aspect, the unit is equipped with a modern nursing control from which not only the biomedical parameters of all the patients of the unit are monitored, but also of the rest of the patients in the cardiology area of the l. 'hospital.
As a novelty, all the beds in the new unit have cameras that allow a live view of the patient from the nursing control. The works of this new unit began in July 2020 and have been carried out in spaces that had occupied old operating rooms until the inauguration, in September 2019, of the new surgical block of the hospital, with a total of 24 new operating rooms of high complexity and 7 of major outpatient surgery. The Semi-Critical Cardiology Patients Unit is located next to the Critical Cardiology Care Unit (Coronary Unit), inaugurated in 2017, with which there is a great relationship and exchange of patients, and is also close to the general ICUs of the hospital, located on the 2nd floor of the Technosurgical Building, with which there is a direct connection through a corridor.
Bellvitge University Hospital is a leading center in Catalonia for critically ill cardiologists. It offers the full range of care for heart disease, from community-based heart failure monitoring programs in coordination with primary care to the most advanced procedures, such as heart transplants or the implementation of mechanical ventricular care systems.
According to Dr. Albert Ariza, coordinator of the cardiology intensive care area at Bellvitge Hospital, said the opening of this new unit "is a fundamental step in consolidating the hospital as a reference center for critically ill and semi-critical cardiology patients". For her part, Ms. Araceli Chacón, head of the Heart Nursing Area, considers that the new unit "must mark a before and after in working conditions for professionals, patient comfort and information for relatives".