Nadeem Khan, MD
Nationwide Children’s Hospital
Nadeem Khan, MD
“We are committed to providing the highest quality care to children and families”
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HOSPITALS Magazine had the privilege to interview Nadeem Khan, MD the Medical Director of the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit at Nationwide Children’s Hospital.
Can you tell us about yourself and when did you join Nationwide Children’s Hopsital?
I am a pediatric critical care intensivist in Columbus, OH. and the Medical Director of the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit at Nationwide Children’s Hospital. I joined the hospital, 22 years ago on August 1998. We have come a long way since, we started with 4 pediatricians back then, now we are more than 22 critical care pediatricians specialized in pediatric critical care medicine where we take care of children, infants and adolescents through the four key periods of growth.
What is PICU; Pediatric Intensive care Unit?
Pediatric Intensive Care Unit is a division of ICU that provides continuous treatment for children who are seriously sick or critically injured and children patients who had major operations like liver transplant or any other kinds of surgery. Our ICUs are divided into different kind; we have Neonatal ICU, cardiac ICU we have approximately 20 beds and our PICU that treats children from one month of age till adult age meaning young men and women in their early 20’s.
What is the main difference between adult ICU and Pediatric ICU?
The main difference is the reason of admission. In general adults have more health problems that need medical intensive care than children. It can be stressful whenever a child is admitted in a hospital and even more stressful when he needs intensive care, so the PICU provides sick children with the highest level of medical care, and provides them with therapies that might not be available in adult ICUs.
Who takes care of children in PICU and are special staff needed for that?
In our PICU we have very highly trained staff who cares about children. Nurses and doctors are trained to deal with the sickest children. And the nurses in PICU are more flexible and have more time to take care of the kids.
Our pediatric intensivists are doctors who, after completing their medical education do extra 3 years of just pediatric residency and another 3 to 4 years to take care of critical ill children.
Our PICU is one of the biggest in the United States we have about 54 beds so we take care of about approximate 3000 children patients per year. The experience our physicians get is much higher than anywhere else.
What are the extra care services that children need during their time in the PICU?
We have many other subspecialties that might be needed during the child stay in PICU, Like cardiologists, neurosurgeons, depending on the child need. Also we have physical therapists, nutritionists and pharmacist to cover all aspects of care needed during the child stay in the PICU.
What also differentiates PICU from adult ICU is that we have rules that allow parents to stay with their children 24 hours; we have within the same room a place where they can sleep. So we try to be a family-centered patient care facility where our staff provide the child and his parents the best care needed.
What sets Nationwide Children’s Hospital from other similar hospitals?
Our main belief is that no sick child should be left without the highest care possible. We are committed to providing the highest quality care to children and families who face very stressful times when one of their members is sick.
Our staff is driven by passion and care; we always invest in research programs and training to ensure that we are always at the forefront of the healthcare’s latest discoveries to better serve sick children.
We always strive to make our hospital the best pediatric hospital in the world.
