Exactly how many materials go through a hospital’s intensive care unit? Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam mapped this for the first time.

15 April 2024

If you end up in the intensive care unit (ICU) of a hospital, you are not doing well. You have just had a serious accident, or have to recover from a major operation. Because the patient’s condition demands it, a hospital pulls out all the stops in ICU. That means all kinds of equipment, but also a huge amount of disposables. Rubber gloves, infusion bags and syringes go through in large numbers every day. The ICU ward is a big consumer of materials.

Doctors and nurses knew full well that a lot of materials are used in ICUs, but during the covid pandemic a few years back, it became painfully clear how much. All the waste from the rooms had to be collected in the corridor, says Nicole Hunfeld, hospital pharmacist at Rotterdam’s Erasmus Medical Centre, where the ICU has 56 beds. “Walking around the ward, I saw bulging waste bins everywhere. All I saw was waste and there was a constant smell of plastic. I discussed this with the head of the ICU department, Diederik Gommers (who also coordinated the national availability of ICU beds at the time, ed.). In no time, we had set up a research project – that’s how it can sometimes go with us. Starting point: okay, we can see that it is a huge amount of waste, but let’s now really examine how much it is.” The ICU is an obvious department to do this research, as it is the place in the hospital with the greatest environmental impact after the operating theatres.

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