New Walsall Manor intensive care unit to open in weeks

The 18-bed unit combines the high dependency and critical care departments within the former West Wing, near to the A&E department, with an increase of five beds.

More nursing staff have also been taken on.

The modern new unit will allow the doctors to treat patients in individual rooms, preventing cross-infection and ensuring their privacy.

Each bed will have a ceiling-mounted pendant that supplies a comprehensive range of essential services including essential gases, power for equipment and IT links.

A relatives’ room has been created to support families and friends of patients.

It has been named the Francoise Suite in memory of a former patient whose family made a generous donation.

The developer, Skanska, described the unit as almost finished externally with final landscaping works to be completed.

Project manager John Cottrell said: “We’re about to start the initial departmental clean along with final testing.

“While these technical works are done new furniture and equipment is being delivered and this will continue through to the end of November.

"We’re working closely with Trust staff, who we have built up a really good relationship with during the course of this project, to ensure this partnership commissioning period is a smooth as possible.”

Patients are expected to be transferred over on Saturday, December 1.

Suzanne Jarvis, Walsall Healthcare’s Care group manager for theatres, anaesthetics and critical care services, said: “We know the next few weeks will be extremely busy as we count down to December 1 which is when we are aiming to have our first patients transferred to the new ICU.

She said staff were looking forward to moving out of ‘extremely challenging’ critical care departments.