Critical Care

PHUHD is part of University Hospitals Dorset and is supported by the specialist services provided by the hospital.

This support is one of the unique advantages of PHUHD compared to other local independent healthcare providers. Most surgery is relatively low risk, but the risks can increase either due to the complexity of the surgery or due to the co-existing health problems of a patient. If you are having higher risk surgery, the onsite support of the specialist services within a large hospital becomes important.

Critical Care and Enhanced Care are now considered a vital part of the care for the higher risk surgical patient.

As the Transformation of University Hospital Dorset progresses, PHUHD patients will have access to a dedicated 6 bed Enhanced Care Ward on our planned surgical site in Poole (opening 2026). This service is designed to support patients having higher risk planned surgery and can provide additional medical and nursing observation and treatment in the first hours and days after major surgery.

On our Bournemouth site, we will have access for our patients to a brand new 30 bed Critical Care Ward (opening 2025). This service can provide the highest level of medical and nursing care to support critically unwell patients. Although most high-risk surgical patients require only intense observation and monitoring, the Critical Care Ward has the facilities to provide multi-organ life support if this is needed. It is staffed by specialist doctors and nurses who have chosen to train in Critical Care Medicine. This is also sometimes called ‘Intensive Care’ and provides life-saving interventions such as artificial ventilation, dialysis and cardiac support. This type of medical care is only available within large NHS hospitals and few large independent hospitals in major cities. Some patients may have a planned post operative stay within Critical Care as part of their planned package of care. However, in the event of an emergency PHUHD also has agreements in place for our patients to be transferred to NHS care; this allows seamless escalation if that is what is required.

The co-operative relationship between PHUHD and the NHS hospital, allows us to provide more complex and higher risk surgery in knowledge that if needed our patients have on site access to Critical Care and Enhanced care.