Lessons learnt from moving an intensive care unit into a new hospital

In 2022, the Royal Liverpool University Hospital moved premises. As part of the move, the patients from its existing Critical Care Unit (consisting of an independent Intensive Care Unit, a High Dependency Unit and a Post-Operative Critical Care Unit), had to be transferred from the old hospital to an entirely new one. Whilst relocation of an Intensive Care Unit, its critically ill patients, staff and equipment has undoubtedly happened elsewhere in the past, very little has been written about such an undertaking. On each occasion, therefore, the teams facing this task may be starting afresh without the benefit of knowing what problems others have previously encountered and how they solved them. In an attempt to highlight some of the modifiable risks, this article serves to explain some of the planning we undertook prior to our move (i.e. forward planning), and reflects on some of the lessons learnt in the process.