The team
A Intensive care service is organized in multidisciplinary teams. Mobilized day and night, these intensive care professionals share a common goal: to make the lives of the most fragile patients their priority.
The medical team
The head of the department
Thehead of the department manages all the doctors you will meet in the department, and is responsible for the clinical activity and the major orientations of the department.
Senior physicians
They coordinate and supervise the care activity of the department and often have a teaching function.
Heads of clinics
They are medical doctors: they coordinate the medical activity of the care units and are responsible for medical students (interns and externs). They are the ones, under the responsibility of the senior physicians, who set the daily therapeutic objectives for the patients in their unit.
The interns
Interns are doctors in the process of training and specialization. Very present in their units, “on the front line”, they will be important contacts for you. They are the ones who ensure continuous medical surveillance and carry out prescriptions under the direct responsibility of the head of clinic of their unit. They also provide continuity of care during night shifts, always supervised by a more experienced physician.
The externals
Medical students between the 4th and 6th year, are in internship in the care unit, generally present in the morning and a few nights per month during the guards. They change departments every 3 months to complete their training.
The paramedicalteam
Nursing executives
The care managers are generally nurses who have been trained to manage paramedical teams. They coordinate the paramedical human resources within the care services and guarantee the quality of care provided at the patient’s bedside.
The nurse and caregiver pair
Nurses and orderlies are permanently present in the units and rooms and provide care.
The nurses take turns 24 hours a day to look after the patients, and are assisted by the orderlies in their tasks, which consist mainly of :
- Monitor the vital parameters of their patients by taking measurements (blood pressure, pulse, oxygen saturation) and by looking several times a day for the appearance of symptoms or changes in the measured values, taking the necessary samples
- Administer and adapt treatments according to the parameters measured and the results of the examinations
- Monitor the onset and prevent complications of all implemented treatments
- Change the patient’s position in bed to prevent pressure sores, check the skin condition and ensure cleanliness (change the sheets and wash the bed)
- Ensure patient comfort
- Set up and manage the proper functioning of life support machines (respirators, dialysis machines, extracorporeal circulation, etc.)
- But also, and perhaps above all, to remain attentive to the needs and questions of patients and their families, to accompany them in their adaptation to this new environment and this difficult situation, to answer their concerns and questions, or direct them to the most competent person to answer them.
Physiotherapists
They have a primary role in resuscitation. They work with patients on a daily basis to maintain joint flexibility and muscular strength in bedridden patients , including coma patients, by gently mobilizing limbs and using pedal machines. They evaluate and reinforce the patients’ muscular strength and respiratory autonomy on a daily or even multi-daily basis by promoting the work of the respiratory muscles in order to accelerate weaning from artificial respiration. They also actively participate in the stages of getting the patient up once he or she is awake: standing up, exercises at the edge of the bed, getting into the chair early…
Dietitians
They ensure that resuscitation patients receive nutritional intakes adapted to their condition . The quality and adequacy of nutritional intake is critical to the successful recovery of patients.
Hospital service agents (ASH)
They are particularly important in intensive care because of the obligation of impeccable cleanliness in intensive care to limit as much as possible nosocomial infections in these particularly fragile patients.
The Social Assistants
They assess the needs in terms of social care and coordinate the exit trajectory.
Psychologists
They meet with patients and their loved ones to help them through the emotionally difficult stages of resuscitation.
The students
In each department, the intensive care patient will meet young medical, nursing or physiotherapy students who participate in the surveillance while learning their trade. Their activity is strictly supervised by the team members.
