About Us

The Intensive Care Unit (ICU) is a specialised area of medicine that cares for patients with life-threatening or potentially life-threatening conditions. It is designed to treat and provide patient-centred care for people who are critically ill or at risk of developing a serious complication and/or recovering from major surgery.

Admitting about 1500 patients a year, the University Hospital Geelong ICU is a 24-bed level 3 adult, mixed medical, surgical, cardiothoracic and level 2 paediatric ward, admitting about 200 children annually. It forms part of a 406-bed teaching hospital, servicing a catchment area of roughly 500,000 people, and is situated on an urban fringe of Melbourne.

We have nine ICU medical consultants and each day, there will be an ICU medical consultant in each pod with a registrar and resident doctor. An Associate Nurse Unit Manager (ANUM) or a senior nurse-in-charge oversees the running of the unit. Each patient has a bedside clinical nurse, and our allied health team of physiotherapists, speech therapists, social worker, pharmacists, and dieticians work in collaboration with the medical team.

There is often complex equipment being used in the ICU, allowing staff to closely monitor the patient’s condition and assist with their path to recovery.

The ICU has two areas - ICU 1 (orange) is to your right as you enter, and ICU 2 (blue) is to your left, where generally all paediatric patients are treated.

Each area has 12 single bed, glass-walled rooms, allowing privacy and noise reduction, while retaining line of sight when needed.

In addition, a number of rooms have been adapted for speciality use, including paediatric and ECMO, a heart-lung bypass machine for patients with heart and/or lung failure. The unit also has in-built teleconference and education facilities.