Join us in our most ambitious project to date. We are raising a minimum of $5 million for all
the state-of-the-art medical equipment for the new ICU for Nanaimo Regional General Hospital.
Nanaimo Regional General Hospital (NRGH) has been providing exemplary care to patients with severe, life-threatening illnesses and injuries in the current Intensive Care Unit (ICU) for 50 years. These patients are the sickest of the sick, requiring constant, close monitoring from a team of specialized medical staff. When you or your loved one needs this level of care, it is critical the ICU has the latest medical equipment in a well-designed space.
NRGH’s ICU is among the oldest in British Columbia, serving more than 400,000 residents north of the Malahat. It is an essential component of healthcare delivery across our entire hospital for patients and the staff who care for them. In 2013, an external review said despite the challenges in an outdated facility, NRGH’s ICU ranks near the top nationally for positive patient health outcomes. Expansion of the NRGH ICU will ensure it can meet the needs of the growing population and that the critical care team at NRGH will be able to continue to deliver excellent care – in a new, modern ICU.
Constructed between the Emergency Department and the Perinatal/Renal building, on the NRGH site, the new ICU will be three storeys. The main floor will be an undeveloped shell space allocated for a future High Acuity Unit. The ICU clinical space will be on the second floor and will include new patient rooms, private family consultation rooms, quiet staff work and meeting areas, increased storage and a welcoming visitor waiting area. The new ICU project is a partnership between the Provincial Government through Island Health, the Nanaimo Regional Hospital District and the Nanaimo & District Hospital Foundation.
With the support of our community, we can achieve this goal!
Click on the photos below to hear from some of our ICU campaign ambassadors and grateful patients
I am very proud of the team I lead in the ICU at NRGH. Every day, they are overcoming the challenges to provide excellent patient care. Built 50 years ago and with only one third of full life-support beds per 100,000 residents compared to the national average, we are in desperate need of an upgrade. With a new ICU, our team will have the space, latest medical equipment and resources needed to meet the growing demand for critical care.
Twice Sharon has been a patient in our aging ICU at NRGH. The first time was when we returned from a holiday in January 2005 where a classic case of endocarditis was not diagnosed in Jamaica. She ended up in ICU with bilateral pneumonia and an infection in every organ including her bones. Doctor David Forrest and an amazing team saved her life and got her strong enough to be able to have, and survive, open-heart surgery at Royal Jubilee to replace her destroyed mitral valve.
The second time was a rare and difficult-to-diagnose case of steroid-resistant pneumonia that required life support for several days. We cannot begin to express our gratitude for the wonderful people who work in our ICU and save lives every day, as they did for Sharon, but do it in a worn out inadequate facility that desperately needs replacing. Our loved ones’ lives are at risk whenever something serious happens and many families like ours still have a wife, a mother and a grandmother only because of our ICU. Our story is not unique and mercifully has a happy ending. We ask everyone to dig deep and remember it can happen to anyone and sometimes even twice.
The new ICU will help our team provide excellent care in a state of the art design with focus on serving our community, families and patients’ needs. Increasing our number of beds will also help us support a higher level of care for patients needing critical care from the smaller rural communities on Vancouver Island.