In an attempt to give added attention to pediatric patient care, the casualty ward at the Government Stanley Medical College Hospital has opened a renovated pediatric emergency room.
The casualty ward, which functioned earlier as a transit point for emergency care, was the place where patients were received before being shifted to the intensive care unit. This consumed time and resulted in delay in providing care. The new pediatric emergency room, on the other hand, will provide immediate attention to save lives within the golden hour.
Doctors said the hospital, which caters to the residents of North Chennai, has been receiving an average of 30 to 40 pediatric emergency cases every day. Many of them are complaints of respiratory distress and unknown poisoning. That was why a fully-equipped emergency room was necessary.
Set up at a cost of about Rs 20 lakh, the four-bedded emergency room will receive patients who are immediately attended to on the spot. Once stabilised, the patient is shifted to the ICU.
With round-the-clock casualty medical officer and staff nurses, the pediatric emergency room is equipped with all the necessary devices and is prepared to attend to mass emergency situations. The ER has pulse oximeters, multi-parameter monitors and warmers, needed to attend to cases of hypothermia for babies where the body’s core temperature drops to abnormal levels.
In addition, the room has a separate cubicle for nebulisation – a procedure where medication is administered through a delivery device in the form of mist that is inhaled inot the lungs. Further, all the beds are fitted on trolleys, saving time when shifting patients to other beds or wards.
“This is part of casualty and a step above ICU. It will act more like triage, where in case of mass casualty, the patients will be stabilised and segregated. We have mobile oxygen masks and ventilators here,” said Dr AL Meenakshi Sundaram, Dean, Government Stanley Medical College Hospital.
With a steady inflow of emergency cases and other patients, doctors said, a state-of-the-art cardiology intensive care unit and intensive medical care unit are also being planned at the hospital.