Southend University Hospital has expanded its critical care facility to provide a high-dependency unit (HDU) for patients, increasing its ability to help more patients who need extra care.
Known as the Kitty Hubbard HDU, it will strengthen the service the hospital provides for patients who have had major surgery or who no longer need intensive care but still require specialist monitoring and require a higher level of organ support, improving the quality, safety and experience of care for both patients and their loved ones.
This brand new state-of-the-art £1 million facility will care for both elective and emergency patients, and will initially have four beds.
Blanca Boira Segarra, Clinical Director for Theatres, Critical Care & Anaesthetics, said: “Until now we didn’t have a dedicated area for these patients and Kitty Hubbard HDU will support patients from all specialities across the hospital who need a higher level of care than can be provided on the speciality wards, but who do not need intensive care. In HDU the patient and nurse ratio is much higher than in a normal ward, there will be one nurse looking after two patients.
