About Department
The department of Critical Care Medicine came into existence in the year 2002 and started functioning from the ICU acquired from department of Anesthesiology. The department is credited to be the first academic department of the country in the field of Critical Care Medicine boasting a closed ICU model.
In a short period after creation, the department has reached to a point where the quality and spectrum of its clinical services are comparable to international standards. The highlights include 24×7 rapid response team, triage team, critical patient transport team within the hospital for all radiological and other procedures, bedside renal replacement therapy and plasmapheresis, bronchoscopy guided percutaneous tracheostomy, bedside ultrasonographic evaluation of the critically ill patient including echocardiography, placement of arterial and venous catheters and percutaneous drain placement, diagnostic and therapeutic bronchoscopy.
The department commenced its first academic programme in the form of Post-Doctoral Certificate Course (PDCC) in the year 2005 and DM in 2013. Till date, nearly 150 students have received training including 50 PDCC and 10 DM awardees. These alumni are serving in public as well as private healthcare establishments across the country and also internationally. The departments ICU is designed to minimize hospital acquired infections, has a waiting lounge for patient relatives, and an academic floor with a lecture theatre
About Prof A.K. Baronia, founder Head of the department
The specialty of Critical Care Medicine came into existence in SGPGI after a National Brain Storming Session conducted in SGPGI (2000) through involvement of various experts from the specialties of Anaesthesia, Internal Medicine and Pulmonary Medicine. It was the hardwork and vision of Prof. Arvind Kumar Baronia (Chief Coordinator for the Brain Storming Session) which ultimately led to the creation of this department in 2002. After taking over as the Head of the department, he had a huge responsibility and numerous obstacles in establishing the services and academics of the fledgling department. Starting the ICU services in the erstwhile ‘SICU’ from the department of Anesthesia with a few enthusiastic but naive faculty and equally naive residents, he moved from strength to strength adding training programmes (PDCC and finally DM course) and ICU spaces. His meticulous planning for the new ICU spaces that were added (up to 20 beds) have created ripples in the entire critical care fraternity of India as these are state-of-the-art ICUs with provision for more than adequate storage space, clean and dirty utility, pantry, changing rooms for doctors and nurses, doctors’ duty rooms, patient waiting halls apart from all the required facilities for each patient cubicle like pendants, RO water outlet, liquid waste disposal, separate wash basins among others. Under the leadership and guidance of Prof. Baronia the department has reached the present status of becoming a much sought after department of national repute.