Critical Care Medicine

The Department of Critical Care Medicine, formerly the General ICU, was established in 1996. It is now a distinctive specialty department in Qingdao, the Qingdao ICU Quality Control Center, an authorized site for master’s and doctoral graduate education, and one of Shandong Province’s first training bases for critical-care specialty nurses; in 2012, it became a key specialty in Shandong Province. It has national committee members and youth committee members of the Critical Care Medicine Branch of the Chinese Medical Association, and is the affiliated institution of deputy chairpersons of the Critical Care Medicine Branch of Shandong Province, the Poisoning Treatment Professional Committee of the Shandong Society of Toxicology, and the Critical Care Medicine Branch of Qingdao. The department has received honors including “Women’s Civilized Post” awards at the national, provincial, and municipal levels, the “Workers’ Pioneer Post” of the Shandong Provincial Federation of Trade Unions, the “Advanced Collective” of the Qingdao Municipal Health System, and the hospital’s “Top Ten Department,” among others.

The department is equipped with various highly intelligent ventilators, multifunctional bedside monitors, bedside blood-gas analyzers, fiberoptic bronchoscopes, cooling devices, bedside blood-purification machines, and other advanced equipment. It was a pioneer in the province in routinely performing minimally invasive tracheostomy, bedside fiberoptic bronchoscopy, Swan–Ganz catheter placement, BIS electroencephalographic monitoring, continuous bedside blood-purification therapy, plasma exchange, and various lung-protective ventilation techniques. It admits more than 1100 critically ill patient admissions annually. Its main patients are those with severe infections, severe trauma, various types of shock, multiple organ dysfunction syndrome (MODS), patients after major surgery, severe pancreatitis, and other critical illnesses. It is at the forefront in China in integrated traditional Chinese and Western medicine treatment of severe pancreatitis, liver transplantation, severe trauma, various poisonings, anticoagulation therapy, MODS management, and other areas.

The department is responsible for teaching courses in Critical Care Medicine, Surgery, and Diagnostics, accepts trainees for further training from within and outside the province, and provides clinical teaching for undergraduate and graduate students. Every year, it holds a national-level continuing-education course entitled “Advances in the Prevention and Treatment of Critical Illness and Thromboembolic Diseases.” It undertakes consultation and treatment of difficult and critically ill patients in the Jiaodong Peninsula, enjoys a high reputation, and serves as the treatment center for difficult and critically ill patients in the region.

The department has a dynamic, united, progressive, and highly skilled nursing team and has established a provincial-level model ward for “Quality Nursing Services.” In 2012, it won the “Gold Award in the Nurses’ Workplace Innovation and Skills Competition of the Shandong Provincial Health System” in the Shandong Division selection competition in the nursing category of the National Female Employees’ Workplace Innovation and Skills Competition.