The hospital is a large, modern academic hospital consisting of two hospital sites located at Solna and Huddinge. The hospital provides some 1800 patient care beds including thoracic, neuro, plastic surgery, transplantation, ecmo-treatment and trauma surgery. It has approximately 15000 employees. One part of the hospital is Astrid Lindgrens children hospital.

Karolinska includes a number of intensive care units, most of them located at the Solna campus.  The Central Intensive Care Unit (CIVA) belongs to the Dept. of Anesthesiology and Intensive Care.  There are four additional ICU’s located at Solna, including the Neurological ICU, Thoracic ICU, Pediatric ICU and Burn ICU.  These units are all relatively small and bed shortages often require cooperation, including patient transfers among units. Cooperative efforts extend to other areas as well, eg. continuing education programs, etc.

CIVA has 13 beds, including 5 beds intended for intermediate care.  The post-operative recovery unit consisting of 22 beds falls under CIVA as well.  The ICU has a broad spectrum of patients and pathology, with a patient population involving the specialties of traumatology, complicated surgery, acute medicine and infectious diseases.

Karolinska University Hospital- Solna has over a 15-year period made a concerted effort to improve the care of the seriously injured.  It is presently the only facility in the greater Stockholm region encompassing all the necessary specialties required of a modern multi-disciplinary trauma center to provide state-of-the-art care.  CIVA lies in close proximity to the trauma unit, ensuring effective in-hospital transfer of all seriously injured multi-trauma patients from the entire Stockholm metropolitan area.

The medical care provided at CIVA is highly specialized and technology intensive, placing high demands on all personell categories involved in patient care.  Unit members have been active in the development of methods of renal replacement therapy.  We are also involved in developing advanced therapies for treatment of patients with severe acute respiratory failure, including considerable experience over many years in non-invasive ventilatory therapies.

The unit has employed a “primary nurse” system for many years.  The goal is that every patient be assigned within 24 hours of admission to an individual nurse with responsibility for all nursing care.  The goal is to provide highly competent nursing care at the bedside.  We are staffed to provide every patient one intensive care nurse at the bedside during day shifts responsible for nursing care (1:1 ratio).  The ratio is somewhat lower during night shifts, resulting in practical nurses having somewhat increased responsibilities.

As a university hospital clinic with a strong teaching commitment, active research and ongoing medical and technical development, continuing education needs are extensive. To meet these high standards and stimulate professional development, five “specialty nurse” positions have been created in the specialty fields of cardiology, nutrition, pain management, dialysis and infection.  The goal is that the persons holding these positions have a competency level corresponding to a master’s degree.

The ICU has one nursing position devoted to research.  A large number of both clinical and pre-clinical research projects are ongoing in the unit.  Clinical research includes projects touching on outcome after intensive care, sedation, nosocomial infection and respiratory care. Pre-clinical projects deal with circulatory and respiratory effects of sepsis and the role of nitric oxide in various critical illness states.

We provide extraordinary care to extremely critical patients and through the highly skilled staff members, the ICU exceeds all expectations. There are ongoing research projects both in nursing and medicine in the unit e.g. postoperative pain, patient’s experiences of visitors, and patient’s memories from intensive care, weaning protocol, dying in intensive care environment. We are going to start an Outreach team after the summer 2005. As you can see there are a lot of things that happens in our unit and we can guarantee that you are going to have an interesting stay with us.