The Rutgers Health Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) is in the Bristol-Myers Squibb Children's Hospital (BMSCH) at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital (RWJUH) in New Brunswick, NJ. The PICU is a 20-bed, state-of-the-art, multidisciplinary inpatient service open 24 hours per day/7 days per week that serves critically ill and injured children from birth to age 21 in a patient and family-centered environment.

Our PICU includes highly trained intensive care physicians (intensivists), nurses, and respiratory therapists. It has board-certified pediatric intensivists physically on site 24 hours a day to provide immediate care to children with immediate life-threatening and complex medical problems. The unit handles all aspects of pediatric traumatic injury, including physical, psychological, and emotional issues. Our pediatric critical care physicians also serve as medical control for an active pediatric transport service.

The Rutgers Health PICU provides care for a spectrum of illnesses and injury, including:

• Diseases of the
  • Brain
  • Gastrointestinal tract
  • Heart
  • Kidneys
  • Lungs
• Cancer
• Epilepsy
• Metabolic disorders
• Renal failure

Our intensivists collaborate with pediatric and surgical specialists to treat children facing severe traumatic injury. We often care for children in the PICU following traumatic injuries or surgical procedures such as kidney transplant, brain tumor removal, and major orthopedic surgery. Our physicians have the expertise to perform leading-edge medical treatment including:

• High-frequency oscillatory mechanical ventilation (a type of ventilation that helps reduce ventilator-associated lung injury)
• Continuous renal replacement therapy (which replaces the normal blood-filtering function of the kidneys)
• Plasmapheresis (the removal, treatment, and return/exchange of blood plasma or components from and back to the blood circulation)

PICU physicians also oversee a busy pediatric moderate sedation service, which provides sedatives and pain control for children undergoing procedures.

Physicians in the PICU are on the faculty of Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, a part of Rutgers University, one of the top research institutions in America. Our doctors are active in research and in teaching about all aspects of pediatric medicine and pediatric critical care, and each brings leading-edge knowledge from the classroom to the exam room.

If your child is critically ill or injured, and is a patient at BMSCH at RWJUH, the Rutgers Health PICU will provide outstanding, compassionate care.