Intensive Care

Intensive care and monitoring around the clock

Intensive care medicine is an indispensable component of acute medicine.

Certified by the Swiss Society of Intensive Care Medicine (SSICM), our interdisciplinary intensive care unit is equipped with modern resources, state-of-the-art from a technical and professional standpoint and is characterised by a calm, personal atmosphere that optimally supports the healing process.

Built in 2018, the interdisciplinary intensive care unit has ten single rooms with acute artificial respiration units and is considered a centre of excellence for respiratory medicine. In the intensive care unit, we treat and care for patients who have a life-threatening illness and who suffer from manifest or imminent failure of one or more vital organs, and are thus dependent on continuous monitoring, intravenous drug treatment, continuous circulatory therapy or invasive organ support (lung, kidney). We also monitor patients postoperatively after scheduled major procedures or in the event of particular risks.

The intensive care unit is managed by a specialist in intensive care medicine together with an expert in intensive care. Here, the two are supported by a team of professional specialists in intensive care as well as highly-skilled experts in intensive care, PET nurses, healthcare assistants (FaGe) as well as nursing assistants. This allows for situational and highly qualified support around the clock.

Core tasks of intensive care medicine:

• Comprehensive treatment, care and rehabilitation of persons with a spinal cord injury. We help these persons in acute situations and assist them in getting back to their day-to-day lives with our rehabilitation. Throughout their lives. 
• One of our core competencies is weaning. Based on decades of experience and the application of differentiated weaning concepts, we support our patients during the ventilation weaning.
  The protracted weaning from a ventilator for both persons with a spinal cord injury and those without a spinal cord injury is carried out by an interdisciplinary team of specialists from intensive care, pneumology, rehabilitation medicine, speech therapy, RespiCare, physiotherapy and occupational therapy.
• Continuous monitoring of vital organ functions of seriously ill or injured persons or following major surgical procedures (such as orthopaedic and major spinal operations).
• Acute internal medical conditions (such as myocardial infarction, pulmonary embolism, cardiac arrhythmias, severe pneumonia, respiratory insufficiency, COPD, severe infections).
• Invasive techniques: mechanical ventilation, long-term ventilation (tracheotomy), positioning techniques, kidney transplantation procedures, advanced circulatory monitoring (PICCO).
• Care and treatment of patients with specific neuromuscular diseases (such as Guillain-Barré syndrome, muscular dystrophy, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis).
• Life-saving resuscitation or immediate measures.
• Support in difficult situations characterised by fear, pain, lack of independence and death.

Our focus is on the patient

Intensive care medicine of course uses various technical devices. Visitors often meet their relatives “hooked up” and connected to machines. That is why it is very important for us to also include the human aspects of our patients and their relatives in the treatment.

We place great importance on the individual needs of our seriously ill intensive care patients. A quiet environment with daylight in every room and a modern lighting concept help to reduce sleep disturbances, anxiety and stress. Because patients in an intensive care unit can sometimes only communicate to a very limited extent or not at all, our medical and nursing team is trained to recognise physical and psychological changes. Here too, close contact with relatives is very important.

Relatives can tell us, for example, what has been important to patients so far, what their habits are, what they like and dislike, and which medical measures are generally desired or refused. With the support of our activation therapist, we incorporate all these aspects into our treatment concept wherever possible.

You are very welcome to the SPC’s Intensive Care unit!
Visiting hours at our ICU are from 13 am to 8 pm.
Please take note of the following information when you visit your relatives. This will help to ensure that your visit runs smoothly and pleasantly for our patients.