semi private vs. private rooms in icu

[samrn32]

I was curious as to how some of the other ICU'S are set up.

We used to be a 9 bed ICU with all private rooms, We are

now a 10 bed ICU . 4 private rooms and 3 semi-privates.

This is a brand new building , brand new ICU. I just feel this

was really poor planning. I can forsee many problems with

this, not that it will change , but what do you all think of this?

[christianRN]

I think every patient should have a private room, but I can't even really imagine semi-private ICU rooms. How do you have room for vents, dialysis machines, multiple IV pumps and poles, specialty beds, etc? Not to mention privacy, confidentiality, and rest.

[Scout_4]

The issue of semi-private rooms is one near and dear to my heart. I work in the General ICU at a large inner- city hospital. The typical patient we have has alphabet soup (HIV, Hep B, TB, etc.). We rarely know what they have on admission (I have lost count on how many times I have been exposed to infectious diseases). We also have a lot of awake young trauma patients. And there is nothing like the experience of coding a patient in DIC with only a curtain between you and an awake/ alert 18 year old trauma patient. We try to separate pateints, but if someone codes off of the floor, it is every man for himself and the coding patient is lucky to get a room. We were renovated only 5 years ago, but no one thought about that, or they simply didn't listen. Semi- private ICU rooms are a violation to privacy and an infection control issue! I can't beleive JHACO hasn't put a stop to this. They can grill us on policy and documentation, but a blatent problem like this goes unnoticed. Ok, I'll get off my soap box!

[traumarns]

most of our rooms are private. however, we have 4 rooms (two on each side of the nurses station) that are divided by a curtain.

when all hell is flying, sometimes we have 4 pts in those rooms, however most of the time it is one.

i love those rooms for pts on cvvh, iabp, 16 thousand pumps, vent, cco monitoring, .....

so basically we convert our semiprivate rooms to one huge icu room for the sicker than snot pts.

[Zee_RN, BSN, RN]

I work in an 18-bed community hospital ICU. We have 8 private rooms and 6 semi-private rooms. I think it is appalling to have semi-private rooms in an ICU; actually, anywhere in a hospital! The only advantage we have is that our rooms are actually pretty big.

[mattsmom81]

I worked agency in an ICU that had an 'overflow' area of 6 curtained bed areas. They used them for post procedure patients and short term stays like post PTCA,or surgeries like uncomplicated thyroidectomies, etc.

If they couldn't be discharged within 24 hours we generally moved them to a private ICU room ( if we had one available.)

True there was not much privacy...and patients up on the BSC knew their roomies heard every little noise behind the curtain...LOL! One noisy confused patient and the whole group gets zero rest...

[1savvydiva]

I know this topic is really old, but I am working the graveyard...pulling up old posts.

The hospital I work for is an over 600-bed level 1 trauma center and our Surgical Trauma ICU has 12 beds, including: 4 private rooms, 2 double rooms, and 1 four-bed ward. Our Medical ICU has about 12 beds, including: 3 or 4 semis and the rest private. Our Progressive Care Unit has about 10-12 beds, only like 4 of them are private. The only floors with ALL private rooms are CCU, CVICU, and Telemetry. Most of the M/S, Neuro, Post-Surg Trauma, Renal, etc floors had 20-30% semi-private beds.

I would LOOOVE to work in a hospital with all pvt's