**Study Type:**
Systematic review
**Blinding:**
No blinded involved in this study.
**Study design**:
The present work will be a systematic review written according to the PreferredReportingItems for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA).
The SPIDER tool (Sample, Phenomenon of Interest, Design, Evaluation and Research strategy) was used to guide the information search process in formulating a research question: What is the current state of implementation and operation of Intermediate Care Units (IMCUs) in the global healthcare context, and how does this affect the availability of material and human resources?
**Search**:
To focus the search for information the following Health Sciences (DeCS) and Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) terms were used: "intermediate care units", "benefits", "in-termediate care facilities", "effectiveness", "intensive medicine" and "patient comfort". At the same time, to narrow down the search further, Boolean AND was used.
In each of the databases, several combinations of the above descriptors were made using the Boolean operator AND until the most appropriate combination for the objectives of the study was obtained. The following search equations were used to retrieve the studies: “Intermediate care units” AND benefits, “intermediate care units” AND “in-termediate care facilities”, “Intermediate care units” AND “intensive medicine”, “in-termediate care units” AND effectiveness, “intermediate care units” AND “patient comfort”.
**Study selection:**
All retrieved studies were imported into the Mendeley Desktop bibliographic manager, with duplicate studies being removed. The article selection process was con-ducted using the following inclusion criteria: availability of full-text articles, articles in English or Spanish, and articles with the keyword "intermediate care units" in the title.
Additionally, we excluded articles that were unavailable for full-text access, sys-tematic reviews, studies with a pathology-specific focus, and those that referred to the intermediate care unit as an extension unit for chronic patients or home care, rather than as a center for semi-critical patients. No studies were excluded based on their date of publication as this is a topic that has been underexplored, which offers a broader per-spective on the relevant subject matter. The studies underwent independent screening by two reviewers, PLJ and MCMF. Any conflicts were resolved through discussion.
