Marveling at 50 years of advancement in critical care, Esther Santos, RN, (left), Patricia O’Neil Donnelly, RN, (center) and Stella Sroka, RN, (right), tour a patient room in St. Joseph’s current intensive care unit.
was split into two units, a 12-bed surgical intensive care unit (SICU) and an eight-bed coronary care unit (CCU). In 1976, a coronary surgery team from the Cleveland Clinic converted the four-bed burn unit into an openheart unit housed within the 12-bed SICU. Esther Santos, RN, who started working in the ICU in 1973 and continued until 2006, had a front row seat as ICU technologies advanced along a curve that has grown steeper and steeper. “The environment in St. Joseph’s ICUs is never static,” Santos says. “There is no end to the learning. “While we are taking care of patients in an increasingly high-tech environment, there is one thing at St. Joseph’s that has never changed. We know that the technology only complements the care our patients and their families receive. We aren’t taking care of machines, we take care of patients.” Just as the ICUs have grown in size and scope, and the technologies to help care for the sickest patients have blossomed, Esther Santos, Patricia Donnelly and Stella Sroka have also witnessed a dramatic change in the way ICUs are operated with the advent of a new medical specialty, the intensivist. Intensivists are doctors who, besides their primary specialties, have advanced training and certification in critical care medicine—the level of care offered in St. Joseph’s intensive care units and often aimed at patients whose problems involve multiple organ systems. They are often pulmonologists, anesthesiologists or surgeons who regularly spend all or much of their time at the hospital.
www.sjhsyr.org
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ICUs Receive Beacon Award
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t. Joseph’s Hospital Health Center’s intensive care units are recipients of the Beacon Award for Critical Care Excellence from the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses. This award places St. Joseph’s ICUs among the top in New York state and the nation. For more information: aacn.org.
Brian Chanatry, MD, is a good example. Dr. Chanatry came to St. Joseph’s as an anesthesia resident in 1985 and stayed on as part of the anesthesia staff. In 1992, he took a year off to earn his fellowship and certification in critical care and has filled a joint role since then. “Traditionally in anesthesiology, once you have completed your surgical case, then you are finished with the patient and care is transferred to someone else,” Dr. Chanatry says. “I wanted the opportunity to get involved with critically ill patients because it’s an important role and we are well suited because of our training. “Many of the techniques for resuscitation and the ongoing monitoring and treatment of people who are unstable from a hemodynamic (blood pressure) or respiratory standpoint are the techniques we use in the operating room just as a matter of course. So handling airways, placing breathing tubes, ventilating the lungs continued on page 12
summer 2010
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St. Joseph’s hospital Health Center
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caring Connection
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