Saskatoon RUH expands ICU capacity as COVID cases rise

Saskatoon's Royal University Hospital has expanded the capacity of its intensive care unit. 

This comes as four COVID-19 patients are currently receiving intensive care at RUH — filling more than a quarter of the ICU's usual 13-bed capacity — and cases in the city are quickly rising. 

Lori Garchinski, Saskatchewan Health Authority (SHA) executive director for tertiary care, said plans to move the ICU to a larger space have been in the works since the spring and early summer. These plans were designed to "trigger" after a certain number of COVID-19 patients were receiving intensive care.

"We hit our initial trigger of three patients in the intensive care unit with a possible fourth coming last week,"  she said. "Based on that, we did move up to the third floor where there was some level of capacity to care for both COVID and non-COVID patients."

As the number of COVID-19 cases in Saskatoon continues to grow, Garchinski is paying particular attention to the number of people hospitalized by the disease in the city — currently, 18 in total.

"As the numbers grow, the potential to have more patients hospitalized certainly creates capacity challenges for us to look at from an ICU perspective," she explained. "It would appear, at this point in time, that we're ranging up to about 20 to 24 per cent of patients that are hospitalized could end up in the intensive care unit."

This is why the RUH is now expecting to need more ICU beds.

RUH's third floor used to house the pediatric ICU and was well-suited to accommodate this kind of expansion. Months of planning and preparation mean the new space is already stocked with supplies and set up with private rooms. 

"The Ministry of Health has supported us with purchases of extra bedside monitors and ventilators and IV poles in preparation," said Garchinski. "We did some dry runs with the teams and physicians, just to make sure — did we have the right medications in the right place? Did the monitors all set up? We worked with infrastructure and a variety of other areas to ensure that the space, the ventilation, the electrical and the equipment all continues to be up to speed." 

After all this preparation, Garchinski said the move to the new space went smoothly.

"We moved the COVID patients upstairs the first day, and really used that as a bit of a dry run to make sure that we had the right equipment and information and processes in place," she said. "When we knew we had the right things in place, we slowly moved additional patients upstairs."

Garchinski is calling on the public to take every precaution to avoid getting sick. 

"[Having] both an offensive and a defensive strategy is really the key to success," she said. "So right now, while the hospitals continue to work through their normal acute care surge and winter surge … the offensive teams - my colleagues in primary healthcare and public health, the contact tracing, the public health orders are also working." 

Garchinski said the public's efforts can make a major difference during this once-in-a-lifetime challenge for health-care professionals.

"I've worked for 31 years as a nurse," she said. "We did lots of planning when H1N1 came. We've done emergency preparedness for what happens if there's a tragedy or something else that goes on. 

"This has been — no doubt — a different world [and] to say it has been stressful would be an understatement."