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

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.