Medical personnel donning PPEs walk beside the barbed wire barrier near the Field Intensive Care Unit (ICU) at Kepala Batas Hospital on April 24, 2021. — Picture by Sayuti Zainudin
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SEBERANG PERAI, May 24 — The temporary intensive care unit (ICU) at Hospital Kepala Batas bustled today as medical officers and the military jointly tested the facility to ensure its smooth operation ahead of its opening tomorrow.
Military personnel played the role of “patients” and were pushed on wheeled stretchers along a corridor from the main hospital complex to the mobile ICU.
The same “patients” were then wheeled from the ICU to test the flow of patients leaving the ICU for the main building.
In the dry run today, other technical aspects were also evaluated and timed to ensure there would be no delay in any of the procedures.
They simulated replacing oxygen tanks and calculated the time needed to do so to determine the available period that these could be swapped out before patients began running low on oxygen.
Other technical processes included the flow of bringing in food, sending out specimens, bringing out deceased patients and various support services.
Commanding officer Lt-Col Dr Mohd Zamri Deraman said they also conducted dry runs on risk management in case of various contingencies such as power loss, staff collapse, fire drills, loss of oxygen supply, and air conditioning failure.
The field ICU was set up at the car park area of Hospital Kepala Batas that has been cordoned off with barbed wire.
It consists of 12 beds in three modules and a large tent that could fit up to 15 beds, bringing the maximum capacity to 27 beds.
A full dry run was also held yesterday and today is the second trial to ensure everything was in optimum conditions.
The field ICU will be accepting critical Covid-19 patients tomorrow afternoon onwards.
“We are prepared to accept patients being transferred from the hospital or from the ambulance tomorrow onwards,” Dr Mohd Zamri said.
The field ICU, set up by the army jointly with the Health Ministry and various government agencies, is the first in the country to house critical Covid-19 patients.