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ICU scheduling has always been intense. Today’s software makes intensive care scheduling fast and easy.
History of the ICU and Intensive Care Scheduling
In 1952, Copenhagen experienced a devastating polio epidemic that left hundreds of people unable to breathe on their own. More than 300 of these victims required artificial ventilation 24 hours a day for several weeks. They were kept alive by 1,000 medical and dental students, who hand-ventilated the patients through tracheostomies.
This feat was made possible through effective intensive care scheduling, which coordinated the efforts of the healthcare professionals.
Anesthetist Bjorn Ibsen thought patients would fare better in a dedicated ward, in which each nurse would provide 1:1 care. By December 1953, the first ICU opened its doors. At the height of the epidemic, 250 medical students would work shifts with 35 to 40 doctors each day to provide intensive care to the 300 polio-stricken patients admitted to the hospital each week.
Using only pen and paper, scheduling the teams of intensive care workers must have been a herculean task. Still, the effort was worth it, as polio mortality rates plummeted in Copenhagen from 80% to about 40%.
These early ICU physicians, later known as intensivists, pioneered the use of positive pressure ventilation for patients with acute respiratory failure and other critical conditions. They also created a field of physicians and nurses who had a great deal of training in the use of advanced medical technologies.
Hospitals began carving out space for their own ICUs, and staffing the new units with these specialized healthcare workers. The first ICU “shock ward” was established at Los Angeles County/University of Southern California Medical Center in the USA during the early 1960s, for example. Because of the demands of the field, physician scheduling needed to balance work hours with time off.
Today’s Intensive Care Scheduling
Today’s intensivists are now highly educated in the use of positive pressure ventilation, along with other advanced treatments, such as dialysis, continuous heart and lung support, and insertion of central lines. Keeping ICU mortality rates down requires having the right number of qualified clinicians on hand to treat the sickest patients in the hospital.
The number of intensivists has increased from 13,093 in 2020 to 14,159 in 2022. Having more intensivists on hand improves the patient-to-physician ratio and ultimately improves mortality rates. The Society of Critical Care Medicine recommends a 1:14 practitioner-to-patient ratio for intensivists. To maintain this ratio, hospitals must attract intensivists and offer them a healthy life-work balance through thoughtful shift scheduling.
ByteBloc Provides the Intensive Care Scheduling System Your ICU Needs
Created by a physician for emergency medicine scheduling, ByteBloc also offers intensive care scheduling to keep your ICU running smoothly. Our software helps intensivists get the hours they need and the time off they rely on for a healthy life/work balance. ByteBloc helps keep your ICU well-staffed without being over-staffed.
For more information about intensive care scheduling software that can handle almost all scheduling options, consult with ByteBloc.
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