The Queen Mary Hospital Adult Intensive Care Unit (AICU) is an intensive care unit for managing patients with life threatening illness, injuries and multiple organ failures. It is a tertiary referral center for major trauma, burn, liver transplant and Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation (ECMO) services, as well as a training center for intensive care doctors and nurses.
Our unit was established in 1970 starting with 6 beds in C4. Over the years, it has been further extended to both C4 and C2 with beds shared by different specialties. In April 2004, we moved to the integrated AICU in C2 and E2 with 20 beds, including 10 positive and negative pressure isolation rooms. With finite resources in the face of potentially infinite demand, admission guidelines and discharge criteria have been formulated to determine the priority of bed utilization. The yearly admission is about 1400 cases and the average length of stay is about 3.5 days.
Provision of intensive care services is complex and challenging. It requires a team of well-trained doctors and nurses, working together with other allied health staff in a collaborative multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary team approach. The scope of intensive care nursing duties includes respiratory, cardiac, renal, neurology, surgical and other aspects. AICU doctors and nurses are required to constantly update specialty knowledge and skills to meet with expanding roles and rising service demand.
Training for AICU nurses ranges from basic critical care nursing skills to high-complexity nursing interventions such as renal replacement therapy, mechanical ventilation and ECMO. In order to ensure safety and quality standard of intensive care services, all experienced AICU nurses are required to participate in quality improvement and training activities.
To meet with advancing medical technology, AICU is moving ahead with modernized facilities and informative technology such as the installation of clinical information system. With intensive care nurses moving towards advanced nursing practice, AICU nursing team is striving at further service enhancement and academic development within and beyond the ICU boundary.
Our Mission
- To deliver high standard and safety care to critically ill patients and their immediate families.
- To collaborate with multi disciplinary teams in providing high quality services through harmonious and safety approach.
- To maintain and enhance high standard of care through continuous improvement and research.
- To maximize the available resources, latest technology and professional expertise in providing optimal resuscitation and supporting services for critically ill patients.
- To enhance safety working environment for staff.
- To provide appropriate environment, facilities and competent staff for training and development of critical care personnel.
Our Services
The Queen Mary Hospital (QMH) Adult Intensive Care Unit (AICU) is an intensive care unit for managing patients with life threatening illness, injuries and multiple organ failures. It plays an important part in the delivery of comprehensive adult intensive care services for the whole hospital as well as Hong Kong West Cluster. Furthermore, it is a tertiary referral center for major trauma, burn, liver transplant and Extracorporeal Membranous Oxygenation (ECMO) services, as well as a training center for intensive care doctors and nurses. Since 2014, we have extended our services “Critical Care Outreach Team” to provide physiological support to imminent brain death patient in general medical wards. Moreover, we provide Extracorporeal-Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (eCPR) in Accident and Emergency Department and Coronary Care Unit for cardiac arrest patients.