Joseph Zalocha - A Critical Care Physician

Joseph Zalocha is a Critical Care physician working at Northside Hospital in the St. Petersburg, Florida area. After medical school and before he started his first residency, Dr. Zalocha was junior faculty for Ross University in Miami for a year. He taught third-year medical students how to take and pass their clinical exams. When he started his residency, it was in Internal Medicine at Orlando Regional Medical Center. After three years there and a few more stops along the way, Dr. Zalocha was eventually recruited to be the director of Critical Care at Northside Hospital. He was also recently “elected… to Medical Executive Committee (MEC) of Northside Hospital as treasure[r]/secretary,” where he maintains the medical staff fund. Joseph Zalocha wanted to work in Critical Care because he wanted to be on the front lines of helping people recover from life-threatening conditions and diseases. Dr. Zalocha is in charge of diagnosing and managing life-threatening conditions that re...

Joseph Zalocha is in charge of an Intensive Care Unit at Northside Hospital in the St. Petersburg, Florida area. He also works for a contracted group called EMCare, for which he covers “inpatient service at Largo Hospital, Doctor’s Hospital in Sarasota, [Florida], Northside Hospital, and Oak Hill Hospital in Springhill, [Florida].” As an ICU physician, Dr. Zalocha deals with a high number of patients suffering from Adult Respiratory Distress Syndrome, or ARDS. This occurs when the lungs’ alveoli—tiny, elastic air sacs—fill up with fluid. This fluid prevents some oxygen from getting to the bloodstream and deprives organs from what they need to do their jobs. Usually, Joseph Zalocha has seen ARDS develop in patients who are already seriously ill. It is a common disease for patients in the ICU for various reasons. But under Dr. Zalocha’s watch, the syndrome is preventable and monitored closely to avoid complications. Dr. Zalocha and his teams work to prevent this disease from t...

Joseph Zalocha , as the director of the Intensive Care Unit at Northside Hospital in the St. Petersburg, Florida area, has long been interested in finding new ways to improve ventilator management and other critical organ support functions that he works with on a regular basis. Over his career, many advancements in ICU treatment and equipment have been made to improve patient health in the ICU and to get them out of intensive care treatment sooner. One focus of these improvements has been in ventilator management. When researchers work on improving this technology, they focus on a few key factors to help doctors and patients.  Joseph Zalocha has been interested in helping improve his patients’ comfort level in the ICU. This helps them relax and lets their bodies react as normally as possible to treatment without stress hormones flowing through the body and other interferences. Ventilators in recent years have been made to improve gas exchanges between the body and the mac...