The Pediatric Intensive Care Unit at Zaragoza’s Miguel Servet Children’s Hospital has opened new facilities spanning 709 square meters, with 10 individual rooms and a family-centered care model open 24 hours a day. The renovation strengthens the capacity of a referral unit serving Aragon, La Rioja, and Soria, which handles around 450 admissions a year.
The new Miguel Servet PICU doubles its isolation capacity
The new PICU includes 10 individual rooms, two of them equipped for protective isolation. This layout doubles the unit’s isolation capacity compared with the previous shared open-plan area and makes it easier to tailor care for children with complex conditions from different specialties, as well as highly complex postoperative patients.
Each room has natural light and dual-arm ceiling-mounted columns to supply medical gases and manage medication pumps. The unit also features non-recording video surveillance and an emergency call system with coded alerts to speed responses to life-threatening situations.
The reorganization makes it possible to perform certain procedures within the PICU itself, avoiding the need to transfer critically ill patients to other areas of the hospital. This is particularly relevant, among other cases, for the care of severely burned patients.
Space for families and 24-hour pediatric care
The unit maintains an open-door model for families throughout the day. The rooms provide space for parents to stay with their children and include foldaway beds, while the new facilities feature dedicated areas for communicating clinical information privately.
The unit’s head, Juan Pablo García Iñiguez, said the new design improves clinical safety, enables more efficient care, and expands opportunities to humanize treatment. The manager of Zaragoza Health Sector II, Patricia Palazón, noted that the project also includes spaces for care coordination and staff work.
During the presentation, held on September 8, 2026, Aragon President Jorge Azcón linked the technological upgrade with support for patients and their families. The new pediatric ICU is intended to strengthen both aspects of care for critically ill children.
The PICU renovation represents an investment of €2.9 million
The project involved an investment of nearly €2.9 million. The Government of Aragon contributed €2,294,350, while nearly €593,000 came from Aspanoa, Plataforma Europa-Inditex, Pardo, and Fundación Sesé.
The funding has made it possible to renovate a unit that combines more space, individual rooms, and technological resources with an organizational model designed to reduce internal transfers and facilitate families’ presence during hospitalization.
