Dept of Intensive Care, Erasme University Hospital, Brussels, Belgium

The Erasme University Hospital, the academic hospital of the “Université Libre de Bruxelles” is an 858-bed hospital with about 26,000 inpatient admissions and 260,000 outpatient consultations per year. All academic specialties are present within the hospital, including neurosurgery, cardiac surgery and all types of transplantation. Erasme is primarily an adult hospital, as there is a separate children’s hospital in Brussels.

The medico-surgical department of intensive care is situated on the -1 le­vel, just next to the emergency department and an accessory X-ray unit. The 34-bed-department of intensive care is divided into five units (6 beds in unit 1, 6 in unit 2, 6 in unit 3, 8 in unit 4 and 8 in unit 5) and a 4 bed-so-called “shock room” (see below). Each patient has a private room, of a reasonable size (space is not really a problem, thanks to the location at the -1 level, but a drawback is that natural light is limited)

Each unit is overseen by 3 to 4 doctors, including at least one fellow and one staff intensivist. Each unit is multidisciplinary and accepts all patients, regardless of their specific pathology or reason for admission. This mixed nature of the units has always been an important aspect of our department ensuring that all staff members are equally familiar with all aspects of intensive care medicine and equipment. Moreover, staff rotate frequently through the five units to avoid any attachment to one specific unit.