الفهرس 
BASICS OF ICUOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
T
he intensive care unit (ICU) is a distinct organizational and geographic entity for clinical activity and care, operating in cooperation with other departments integrated in a hospital to give a special care to special cases that needs it.
There are different ICU designs and multiple innovations in the designs. ICU designs vary according to geometrical aspects, natural environment, room size and shape, nurse station location even the empty space around the bed. ICU designs either s closed or opened, centralized or decentralized have a lot of advantages and disadvantages but the design is made according to special considerations such as the cost the location and the quality of the hospital.
Also every ICU is required to have a quality assessment and improvement program. This should include a report of complications and adverse events, and a system in which reflects quality and safety of care which is continuously monitored as well.
Mainly two types of patients are likely to benefit from admission to an ICU. First are patients requiring monitoring and treatment because one or more vital functions are threatened by an acute or chronic disease. The other type are patients already having failure of one of the vital functions such as cardiovascular, respiratory, renal, metabolic, or cerebral function but with a reasonable chance of recovery.
On the contrary some patients are generally not appropriate for ICU admission such as patients with Irreversible brain damage, End stage cardiac, respiratory and liver disease with no options for transplant.
As there are rules of admission of the patient to the intensive care unit there are also policies for his discharge. The discharge of a patient from ICU is taken after continuous revising of the status of patients admitted to decide who no longer need ICU care.
Providing the Intensive care unit with policies for all procedures and performances is essential to achieve a better patient outcome. Policies are even made to the kind of care given to special cases with special needs.
An ICU won’t be complete without its team and a team performance which is determined by a wide range of factors- team composition (size, skills, knowledge, and diversity), team’s task, organizational context, team processes, level effort on the task, appropriateness of the strategies for achieving the task, and resources available to the team.
We must not forget that the family has a role in the outcome of the patient health. They act as buffers for patient anxiety and serve as valuable resources for patient care. However, when family anxiety is high, they may be unable to support the patient, and may transfer their anxiety to him.
All in all, it was found that improving the ICU designs, regulating the process of admission and discharge and developing the ICU team performance influences the patient outcome as well as their families.