The COVID-19 pandemic is a difficult time for all of us. The situation has changed rapidly and dramatically affecting all of our lives. Our focus at this time must be to prevent the spread of the disease and to protect our patients, families and loved ones as well as our staff. To allow us to do this, we have had to make the difficult decision to change our visitor policy. We have followed guidance from NHS England to develop a visiting policy for neurocritical care. Find out more >
We are a highly specialised Neurosurgical and Neuromedical Critical Care Unit, based at the National Hospital for Neurology and Nuerosurgery (NHNN) at Queen Square.
We are located across two floors: the first floor Chandler Wing (SITU, HDU 1 and HDU 2) and the ground floor Chandler Wing (MITU and MHDU). We are attached to the Emergency Stroke Unit.
Neurocritical care is led by the neurocritical care team. This team works closely with specialist teams such as neurosurgery or neurology.
Every morning there is a ward round led by the critical care consultant. A full review is made of each patient and a plan for the day made. This plan is later reviewed in the afternoon by the critical care consultant. For longer-term patients, there is a weekly multi-disciplinary (MDT) meeting to discuss longer-term plans, goals and strategies.
In neurocritical care, if a patient requires support from a ventilator they are classified as a Level 3 patient. If they are able to breathe for themselves, but still require critical care for other reasons, then they are classified as a Level 2 patient.
Level 3 patients have a nursing ratio of 1:1. This means there is a nurse allocated to only them 24 hours a day. Level 2 patients have a nursing ration of 2:1. This means a nurse will be allocated to two Level 2 patients.
There is a senior nurse in charge of each shift who oversees the care that is delivered.
ICNARC
Our critical care unit submits data to the Intensive Care National Audit and Research Centre (ICNARC), which compares our performance with comparable critical care units across the UK. For more information please visit www.
Care Quality Commission
Our last CQC visit (2019) rated the NHNN critical care unit as 'Good'. For more information visit www.
We are part of the North East and North Central London (NENCL) Adult Critical Care Network
About the NHNN
