Hospital Information

Vancouver General Hospital (VGH) has more approximately 700 acute care beds, and is the major tertiary referral hospital in the Province. It has a full range of programs and consulting services. It functions as the provincial Trauma Centre and is the home of a number of provincial programs (burn unit, bone marrow transplantation, solid organ transplantation, spinal cord injuries and hyperbaric medicine).

Two intensive care units contribute to the Critical Care Training Program. The main ICU has 27 beds and treats approximately 1300 patients each year drawn from all services and programs of the hospital. More than 90% of the patients require mechanical ventilation and the mean Apache II score of this patient group is 22. The main ICU functions as a closed unit, with the primary management of patients being the responsibility of the house staff and faculty in critical care medicine, with the referring staff functioning as consultants. The hospital cardiac arrest team is drawn from ICU staff, including the critical care residents.

A separate 6-bed cardiac surgical ICU admits approximately 700 patients each year after elective or emergency cardiac surgery or thoracic aneurysm repair. This Unit is managed by a team of cardiac anaesthetists with relevant experience in critical care issues.

St. Paul’s Hospital (SPH) is a 400 bed tertiary care teaching hospital with a 19 bed multidisciplinary ICU and an 11 bed critical care recovery (CCR) for cardiac surgical patients (again managed by anaesthetists), and 11 bed CCU (that accepts ventilated patients). The ICU has 600 admissions per year, about 85% of whom require mechanical ventilation, the mean APACHE II score of this patient group is 24. The ICU provides experience in management of critically ill medical, surgical and trauma patients. It operates as a “closed” ICU, with the primary management of patients being the responsibility of the house staff and faculty in critical care medicine, with the referring staff functioning as consultants. The cardiac arrest team is managed and staffed by the ICU.

Royal Columbian Hospital (RCH) is a 400 bed acute care facility under the Fraser Health Authority and provides care to the communities of New Westminster, Coquitlam and Port Moody. RCH has a staff of 600 physicians (180 family physicians and 420 specialists) and plays an active role in the medical education of students in the department of medicine at UBC, with medical students and residents rotating through the different services at RCH.

The intensive care unit at RCH is a 16 bed multidisciplinary unit and treats over 600 patients per year. The ICU at RCH is complemented by a separate 10 bed high dependency unit called the critical care unit which hosts approximately 900 admissions per year. RCH also has an 8 bed Cardiac Surgery unit which treats critical cardiac patients after emergency or elective cardiac surgery