By DR. VICTOR S. SIERPINA
When you are not feeling well, it is comforting to be treated in a place that makes you feel good. In addition to an attentive, professional staff, other factors that create a positive healing environment include lighting, signage, music, furnishings and artwork. When these are present, you unconsciously and immediately notice that the clinic or hospital has planned your experience there to be a positive one. You get the message that they care about you on multiple levels.
For the past couple of years, I have served on the University of Texas Medical Branch’s Oversight Committee.
Deborah McGrew, the medical branch’s Chief Operating Officer, ably chairs this Friday afternoon meeting. Participants include administrators, faculty, engineers, architects, construction experts, project and facility managers. We oversee the roll out of the medical branch’s new facilities, most recently the new Jennie Sealy Hospital, as well as the Victory Lakes expansion hospital.
Duties cover reviewing everything from hospital beds, color schemes, way-finding, budgets, medical equipment, artwork, aesthetics, functionality for patients and caregivers, and the jillion other things that go into bringing a major construction project to completion. Any of you who have ever built your own home know the choices involved. Multiply this by several orders of magnitude for a large hospital.
McGrew recently took time from her busy schedule for a personal tour of the new hospital. We started on the 11th floor, the new ACE (Acute Care for Elderly) unit.
A prominent patient-friendly design feature puts nursing stations outside each patient room rather than in a centralized location. The nurse sits at a computer station outside the patient room and is able to monitor them directly through a window.
Each ACE unit room has a family nook reminiscent of the Emirates Airline first class section with a fold out sofa-bed, desk and personal television.
On each floor are two family showers for those staying close to their loved ones for extended periods.
The intensive care areas and operating rooms are all high tech, state of the art: robotics, big screens, MRI’s, lifts, pumps, electrical and gas systems, you name it. Rooms have patient lifts on the ceiling to preserve patient safety when transferring and also to protect our precious nursing staff from injury during lifting and turning bed-bound patients.
Back injuries for nurses result in a disproportionate number of days off, worker’s comp claims and sometimes end a nurse’s career at the bedside.
The water views getting off the elevators equal any in the finest hotel. Nearly all the patient rooms have an ocean view or harbor view. Artwork is Galveston-themed and mostly locally sourced and attentively selected. On the main level is a meditation room, gift shop, chapel and places to eat. Windows are everywhere.
In fact, our family medicine residents worry that it is going to be hard to send patients home since the rooms are so beautiful.
Such success in health care facility design is clearly a matter of intention and deeply listening to patients, families, faculty and staff. This brings their voices to life to create a patient-centered healing environment.
Visit the new Jennie Sealy Hospital which opens this weekend. You’ll see and feel what I am talking about.
Dr. Victor S. Sierpina is the WD and Laura Nell Nicholson Family Professor of Integrative Medicine and Professor of Family Medicine at UTMB.