Pediatric Intensive Care (Critical Care)

The Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) at Gillette Children’s serves children and teens under 16 who are critically injured, seriously ill, or recovering from major surgery.

PICU services are called critical care. The goal of pediatric critical care is to stabilize kids so they can continue their recovery and rehabilitation in the inpatient care unit best suited to their needs.

A calm atmosphere and highly trained experts come together to promote healing and recovery in the PICU, which features:

• Large rooms, with glass sliding doors for family privacy and easy monitoring by health care providers
• In-room overnight accommodations for parents or caregivers to stay with kids
• Storage space for your family’s personal items and food
• Free Wi-Fi
• Access to our Ronald McDonald Family Room®
• Access to additional hospital amenities

Children and teens who have a wide variety of serious conditions and injuries might visit the PICU. Some of the conditions we care for most often include:

• Brain injury and related neurotrauma
• Spinal cord injury and related neurotrauma
• Other serious traumatic injuries
• Lung and breathing (pulmonary) conditions
• Recovery following extensive surgery
• Severe infections

Our critical care physicians and nurses are some of the most highly trained critical care experts in the Twin Cities. At Gillette, you’ll work with a pediatric critical care medicine team that has experience in caring for kids who have significant injuries or are recovering from major surgery.

Your family can count on an environment that not only meets the highest standards of care for your child, but also provides comfort and emotional support. In addition to critical care, services from a variety of medical and surgical specialists can help your whole family:

• Child life services
• Comprehensive inpatient rehabilitation care
• Craniofacial and plastic surgery
• Neurology care
• Neuropsychology care
• Neurosciences inpatient care
• Neurosurgery
• Orthopedics care (inpatient or outpatient)
• Psychology services
• Radiology and imaging services
• Rehabilitation therapies
• School services
• Social work services
• Surgery
• Wound care