PICU Design
Reinvention, rather than make do and mend
Peter Stead and Cath Lake of P+HS Architects explain how, working with Sheffield Health and Social Care NHS Foundation Trust, they designed a new Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) within the existing Longley Centre at Sheffield’s Northern General Hospital. As they explain, the decision to relocate the unit to the front of the centre, within the former CAMHS unit, provided ‘both opportunities and constraints’.
As mental health emerges from the shadows of being the poor relation in healthcare, estates teams are rising to the challenge in re-providing the facilities so desperately needed to deliver service improvements. The renewed national impetus and determination to improve mental healthcare is welcomed and accepted as long overdue, but in the surge of enthusiasm for new and better, it is important to recognise the elements of value in existing facilities before sweeping everything away. It is true that much of the old should be buried – cramped, locked facilities with no access to outside space – but, with a strong and experienced specialist team, there can be a cost-effective and more sustainable alternative. When Sheffield Health and Social Care NHS
‘The PICU provides hope, a place of safety where persons are cared for to reduce distress and a place which, for a temporary period of time, brings balance and restores calm’
Foundation Trust (SHSC NHS FT) reviewed its options for a new Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU), it chose to work with what it already had, rather than start from scratch. Mental Health services had been delivered from the Longley Centre at Sheffield’s Northern General Hospital for over 40 years; staff, service-users, and their families, knew the location, and were familiar with their routes there. Reusing the existing building would provide continuity for users, as well as being a more sustainable and cost-effective solution, but would only be considered as a viable option if the new design could reflect the Trust’s ambitious plans.
WIDER ESTATES STRATEGY The Trust procured the project following the completion of a wider estates strategy. The team, led by Arcadis, included P+HS Architects and CAD21 Building Services Consultants, and was procured through the Buying Solutions framework; it was selected for its empathy and understanding of mental
A courtyard view.
healthcare environments, and for its ability to create a new, forward-thinking vision for the Trust. The PICU can often be a place of
distress, disturbance, and challenging behaviour. The requirement is to care for service-users with severe mental illness, who, during acute episodes, may present a significant degree of violent, aggressive, or self-harming conduct. However, while it operates as such, it was
important to the Trust that the PICU should not be so obviously seen as a locked environment, a confinement in which the individual loses their freedom or privacy and dignity. The PICU provides hope, a place of safety where persons are cared for to reduce distress, and a place which, for a temporary period of time, brings balance and restores calm.
SERVICE-USER CENTRED, MULTIDISCIPLINARY, AND COLLABORATIVE With this focus, Sheffield Health and Social Care NHS Foundation Trust invited P+HS Architects to re-shape the Intensive Treatment Service at the Longley Centre in Sheffield. The brief was to ensure that the care and
treatment offered is service user-centred, multidisciplinary, intensive, comprehensive, and collaborative. The environment needed also to allow an immediacy of response to critical situations. The service base before the transformation
was an eight-bedded locked ward situated within the Longley Centre, but under the Acute Care Reconfiguration, the number of beds needed increasing to 10. The existing ward’s
Before – the ‘unloved and unused’ courtyard.
The new facility has a striking design from all angles. THE NE TWORK
J u l y 20 16
17
Photos courtesy of P+HS Architects.
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28