King Saud Medical Complex
| King Saud Medical City مدينة الملك سعود الطبية | |
|---|---|
| Ministry of Health | |
| Geography | |
| Location |
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia  |
| Organisation | |
| Funding | Governmental |
| Hospital type | Public |
| Affiliated university |
- King Saud University - Imam Muhammad bin Saud Islamic University - Princess Nora bint Abdul Rahman University |
| Services | |
| Standards | Accreditation from International Joint Commission (JCI) obtained on 22 Jan 2013 |
| Emergency department | Yes |
| Beds | 1500 |
| History | |
| Founded | 13 Oct 1956 |
| Links | |
| Website | http://www.ksmc.med.sa |
King Saud Medical City is a hospital in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. It is a tertiary care center for medicine and surgery especially spinal and neurosurgery. It is international recognized center for training in medicine and surgery. It has 1500 beds of which 180 beds are in the intensive-care unit beds. By virtue of the bed capacity and patient load, KSMC is by far the largest hospital of Saudi Arabia. KSMC's ER department is one of the busiest in the country with a variety of accident and emergency cases pouring in who are triaged and then referred to particular specialties. Teams of doctors from all specialties are available round the clock to provide emergency medical treatment for all patients - emergency or admitted.
KSMC meets all the criteria for training post-graduate doctors. Consultants, specialists, registrars, residents and interns from all specialties and sub specialties form groups within their departments. Each group follows a hierarchy which forms a pyramid, having interns at the bottom, rising to residents, registrars followed by specialists and consultants all headed by the head of a Group. All groups are headed by the Head of the Department. On a daily basis, a team of doctors from each group are on-call, forming a team consisting of intern, R1 (first year resident), R2 (second year resident), R4 or R5 (registrar), Specialist and finally Consultant. All cases referred to the team will be endorsed to each of its member and decisions regarding choice of treatment will be made by the specialist and in extremis, the consultant. Thus the patient and the team of doctors are benefited equally. The patient has a team of doctors caring for him, thus even if a member of the team is busy a senior covers him and vigils the patient. All the team members learn from the seniors who imparts a blend of education with experience. In most circumstances, KSMC is a hospital run by the specialists backed up by the consultant as need may be.
All patients needing emergency operations are sent to a special operating room which caters to emergency operating room services. Those patients needing ICU services are shifted there without delay. The elective operating rooms are in a Theater complex on the third floor. The ICU in the old building has been reserved for trauma cases with some beds reserved for infected cases in isolation. The medical tower ICU is a multidisciplinary ICU meant for patients admitted under different specialties. A mobile ICU team monitors those patients under their umbrella of care who haven't been able to be physically admitted in ICU due to lack of beds. This reflects the degree to which the ICU is busy! The mobile team provides the same standard of care to patients both inside and outside their physical ICU. In addition, the mobile team also conducts serial examinations on all of its patients to assess how soon they need to escalate or step-down the patients from ICU care.
A Rapid Response Team (RRT) is another wing of the ICU compromising of nurses and doctors who attend to the patient bed-side within minutes of activation. They assess and monitor an admitted patient and then decide if the patient needs ICU care. The code blue team (activated during cardiac arrest) are also available within minutes of being activated. They are responsible for performing CPR and resuscitating those patients who has suffered a cardiac arrest.
Specialties such as obstetrics and gynecology, pediatrics, dental have their own buildings (towers) which cater to serving patients of those diseases. In the near future, more towers will be added such as the surgical tower and emergency services tower (which are under construction).
Since a few years KSMC has upgraded its status to a medical city (King Saud Medical City)
A new chapter has been added to the KSMC story since 1st January 2016. A Trauma Unit has been started which caters to all trauma cases which have been brought directly to KSMC or those being referred to KSMC for further management coming from all corners of the Kingdom, on many occasions by air ambulance. Dr. Mohammed Marae Asieri (trained at South Africa in the busiest Trauma Center in the World), Director of the Trauma Unit is assisted by Dr. Clemens Gerstenkorn Ingram, Dr. Jovial D'Souza and Dr. Fazal Ahmad Khan. upon activation the Trauma Unit is available at the bed side of the patient in the ER Resuscitation area within 15 minutes and the reception and resuscitation is begun along with the ER doctors. The Trauma Unit is slowly shaping itself into a Level 1 Trauma Center with its own tower (building), dedicated ER, Resuscitation area, ICU and wards. At this point, the Trauma Unit is evolving having served 92 patients since inception (42 days, 1st Jan 2016 to 12th Feb 2016). The trauma ICU is up to its full capacity and patients have started overflowing to the Tower ICU.
Trauma unit at present is about quantity and quality. Many success stories are there to be shared with patients brought in with a GCS of 3/15, sluggish pupils, who are now having a GCS of 15/15 and regained higher mental functions after heroic procedures such as Aortic cross clamping and Thoracotomy. CPGs, SOPs and in-house training of staff along with foreign scholarships are underway to improve the staff. New equipment is being procured to improve the quality of care. Both man and machine are being upgraded to achieve success and to keep abreast with the challenging field of trauma.
Under the guidance and eagle-eyed vision of Dr. Haitham Mohammed Al Falah, (CEO, Consultant General, Endocrine and Bariatric Surgeon), KSMC and Trauma Unit is history in the making ! The vision and mission are being materialized as this article is being read.
See also
Notes
References
[1] Deena M. Barakah, and Sami S. Alwakeel, “Impact of CPOE on Physicians and Dentists' Work Performance at King Saud Medical Complex Hospital: A Case Study” Proceedings of the World Congress on Engineering and Computer Science 2009 Vol. I, WCECS 2009, October 20–22, 2009, San Francisco, USA pp296–298
[2]Deena M. Barakah, and Ali Al Kinani, “RFID Applications in Saudi Hospitals: A Case Study” Proceedings of 12th IBIMA conference on Creating Global Economies through Innovation and Knowledge Management, June 29–30, 2009, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia pp1670–1672.
[3] Saddik, B.;Barakah, D.M. ;Aldosari, B., “A Study of PDA and Smartphone Adoption Rates at King Saud Medical City Hospitals” , Proceedings of the 6th IEEE International Symposium on Medical Information and Communication Technology,La Jolla, USA, 25–29 March 2012
[4] Deena M Barakah, Ayman M Alrobia, Sami Alwakeel . “ Strategic Plan and Development Projects for Modern Health Clinical Information Systems at King Saud Medical City” , International Journal of Information and Electronics Engineering, Vol. 4, No. 4, July 2014, PP 317–324
[5] D M Barakah & Mohammad S. Al Hasan, Sami Alwakeel, “Information Technology Adoption and Literacy in Health Care Practice: A Case Study” International Conference on Software & Information Systems (ICSIS 2015), May 9-10 , 2015.. Also published in Journal of Advances in Information Technology Vol. 6, No. 1, February 2015
[6] D M Barakah & Manal M. Shira, Sami Alwakeel, “Information Technologies Adoption in Medical Education, Research and Advancement Clinical Treatment at King Saud Medical City” International Conference on Software & Information Systems (ICSIS 2015), May 9-10 , 2015. Also published in Journal of Advances in Information Technology Vol. 6, No. 2, May 2015