Levels of Care in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit

If your child has fallen ill, and requires hospitalization, there may be discussion over the transition to a pediatric intensive care unit, PICU. For many parents, the need for your child's admission to a PICU area is often taken by surprise. Remembering that children and infants require more intense observation, an illness that an adult may manage perfectly often results in the need for intensive care for an infant.

As a parent, it is important to understand how the admission to a PICU facility is determined. As a general rule, the pediatric intensive care unit can be permitted for children as old as 16 years of age. While most children under four weeks of age are maintained in the neonatal intensive care unit, it is not uncommon for young, even premature babies, to be found in the PICU as well.

There are three levels to the care your child will receive in the pediatric intensive care unit. Simply defined as Level 1 through Level 3, each level of care will provide for the appropriate nursing and hospital support staff.

In Level 1 PICU care, your child is considered to be of high-dependency. With this classification of intensive care, your child is expected to require close monitoring but is not utilizing any life support equipment. In this level of PICU care, there is usually only one organ or system involved in management and the system can not be related to respiratory distress. At Level 1 PICU, your child is only one step above the transition into a standard hospital room.

For children who are admitted at Level 2 PICU care, the child needs more intensive monitoring than that of Level 1 and may require intubation or ventilation services. In the Level 2 PICU setting, there are usually two or more organs or bodily systems to be managed and there may be dynamics involving acute and chronic care issues.