Expertise in managing critically ill patients
In Critical Care Medicine, we provide specialized care for patients who have undergone complex surgery at Tufts Medical Center and are staying in our Surgical Intensive Care Unit (SICU), Cardiac Care Unit (CCU) or Cardiothoracic Unit (CTU). Our goal is to help you recover as fast and safely as possible, so that you can return to your life.
Our team includes anesthesiologists, surgical intensivists, medical intensivists and nurses who are highly trained and experienced in managing critically ill patients. This multidisciplinary expertise helps us take a comprehensive approach to caring for you.
Excellence in intensive care
We believe continuity of care is important, so the same anesthesiology and surgical teams that oversee your surgery also tend to you in the SICU, CCU and CTU.
Furthermore, some patients have such severe illness that multiple organ systems also become impaired (e.g. heart, lungs, kidney, brain). Our intensivists take the lead in coordinating your care among all the specialists at Tufts MC to make sure your entire body heals.
Our approach to critical care has produced impressive results. The SICU participates in a national database called Project Impact, which tracks outcomes for patients and allows for comparisons with other ICUs in North America. We're proud to report our SICU has consistently outperformed comparative ICUs in:
- Survival rates from critical illness
- Time spent in the ICU
- Rates of complications
We've also developed many protocols for standardizing care for critically ill patients, resulting in fewer medical errors and better survival rates. Our success has led a number of hospitals nationwide to adopt many of our protocols.
Learn more about our SICU.
Here for families too
Having a loved one with a critical illness can place an enormous burden on family members. With the help of our nursing staff, we work hard to keep families up to date on their loved one's progress following major surgery.
Sometimes family members are responsible for making care-related decisions. If this is the case, one of our intensivists will meet with you to discuss treatment options and offer recommendations. We want to give you all the information you need to feel comfortable with the decisions you make.
