Effect of a segregated-care system on patients' length of stay in intensive care.

Abstract

The Internal Medicine Residency Program of the Raritan Bay Medical Center's Perth Amboy Division was changed in July 1987 from a full continuity-of-care system to a unit-isolation one. The authors compared patients' data from the first two months of the academic years 1986-87 and 1987-88 and were unable to observe any impact of the change on length of stay in intensive care. However, informal interviews with the house staff members indicated that the change had a positive impact on their education, because of their closer observation of the pathophysiology of individual disease states and greater enjoyment of the time spent in critical care.