The vision of Medical Critical Care is to provide the highest quality, compassionate care to our patients and families in a collaborative, interdisciplinary, patient-centered environment built on trust and mutual respect. A patient’s mother recently articulated who we strive to be, saying, “your team of doctors and nurses are experts in both science and compassion.”
Division of Medical Critical Care (MCC)
The MCC is a division within the Department of Pediatrics that encompasses the entire 11th floor and part of the ninth floor in the main hospital building at Boston Children’s Hospital and admits approximately 1,650 patients each year. Our clinical teams care primarily for critically ill children who have medical diagnoses, but we often admit children requiring peri- and post-operative care as well. The MCC encompasses two units: the Intermediate Care Program (ICP) includes 12 beds on the ninth floor, and the Medical Intensive Care Unit (MICU) consists of 22 beds on the 11th floor. The division’s clinical faculty comprises 15 full-time attending physicians and four attending nocturnist physicians. Our care providers include 11 nurse practitioners and hospitalists and 15 critical care fellows whose time is shared with the 7 South Medical-Surgical Intensive Care Unit. Clinical areas of excellence in the division include the care of critically ill children with diseases affecting the respiratory, cardiovascular, endocrine, metabolic, renal, and/or immune systems. The division also founded and manages the bio-containment unit, a highly specialized unit and care team designed to mobilize as needed to care for children with high-risk infections.
The Intermediate Care Program (ICP)
The ICP is a unit designed to care for children who are moderately critically ill and require a high intensity of care or technological support than a regular hospital floor might be able to provide. The unit is composed of 12 beds, and each patient has a nurse who is caring for only him/her and possibly one other patient (the same ratio as an intensive care unit). The ICP is the hospital's primary center of care for children with diabetic ketoacidosis. Within the United States, it is one of only a few non-intensive care units that provides care for children requiring non-invasive ventilation such as BiPAP and CPAP.
Learn about the Intermediate Care Program.
The Medical Intensive Care Unit (MICU)
The MICU is a 22-bed intensive care unit that cares for critically ill children, primarily with medical diagnoses (i.e., patients who do not have a primary surgical issue), with a 1:1 or 1:2 nursing ratio. The MICU cares for a similar population as the ICP, but with higher acuity. MICU patients have a wide range of critical illness diagnoses including respiratory failure (severe breathing problems), sepsis (serious infection), nutritional failure, poisoning, congenital anomalies, and life-threatening complications of metabolic diseases and endocrine disorders. The MICU additionally cares for patients requiring acute non-invasive ventilation or ventilator support, and patients requiring blood pressure support. Unique features include a specially designed sleep study room fully equipped as both an ICU bay and infrared-lit sleep facility, and a bio-containment unit.
