What is a Critical Care Centre?

A Critical Care Centre treats the sickest patients in the hospital. Both Intensive Care patients who need specialist treatment because one or more of their body systems, such as their heart, lung or kidneys, are not working properly and patients needing high dependency care that can’t be provided on general wards can all be treated within the same unit by a dedicated multi-disciplinary team.

Critical Care at King’s College Hospital

King’s College Hospital is one of the largest and busiest teaching hospitals in London; recognised internationally as a major centre of clinical and academic excellence. As a specialist centre for neuro, liver and cardiac surgery the current intensive care units are constantly caring for patients while they recover from life saving surgery. We also accept patients from other hospitals when they need more specialist care.
To cope with the increase of critically ill patients a second intensive care unit (ICU) was opened. However, due to lack of space it is located in another wing of the hospital away from the original ICU, meaning specialised staff and equipment is shared between the two.
Despite these physical limitations, its designation as a Hyper Acute Stroke Unit and one of the four Level I Trauma Centres in London by Healthcare for London in 2009 recognises its unique set of surgical specialities and support services. . These designations mean that paramedical teams will automatically bring patients, with severe trauma or who suffered a stroke in SE London, Kent or Sussex, to King’s for treatment.
Countries with a major trauma network system have a 40% higher survival rate than the UK so presenting to a major trauma centre such as King’s can literally be the difference between life and death.
We now treat around 2000 critically ill patients a year, a figure that has more than doubled in the last five years and is still rising.

Our Plans

King’s is planning the largest expansion in their 170 year history of the emergency and trauma departments which is designed to bring the best equipment and treatments available in the 21st Century to our patients and local community.
At the centre is a confirmed investment is a £10m state-of-the-art 46 bedded Critical Care Unit that will increase our bed capacity by almost 50%. This brand new facility will care for the most complex surgical and acute clinical cases, as well creating a dedicated 24/7 Consultant-led Trauma Team.
Every bed space will be equipped to Intensive Care Level (a higher specification requirement than High Dependency Level), and will include state-of-the-art equipment including ventilators, multi functional bedside monitors and high performance ultrasound scanners to name just a few.
9 isolation units and feature greater privacy for patients and their families.
Whether the admission is planned or unexpected, we aim to provide the highest possible quality of care with the best available technology.
In particular, this centre will support the specialist services that are now found in our hospital including those for people who have suffered strokes, heart attacks, severe head injuries, blood disorders like leukaemia and major trauma from accidents to name a few.

We need your help

To create a world-leading Critical Care Centre requires an enormous amount of state-of-the-art equipment - estimated at around £60k per bed space.
We have the funding to build the new centre but we need your help to raise £4million to purchase the life saving equipment.
Please click here to make a donation today and help us achieve these plans to save more lives.