HOSPITAL CONSTRUCTION
A rendered image of the impressive interior of the new 17-storey Peter Gilgan Patient Care Tower at St Michael’s Hospital in Toronto.
Socially distanced contractors To commission the floors in one week, contractors socially distanced as they activated the mechanical and electrical infrastructure, and built life safety elements to code, says Frank Panici, vice-president of NORR Architects and Engineers. Everything was ‘a go’ by the second week of April (last year). The wide corridors on the new floors now hold a series of private inpatient rooms, including three negative pressure isolation rooms, each with sliding glass doors that offer direct vantage points from a decentralised nurses’ station. Staff can visually monitor patients without disrupting their rest, while reducing the risk of exposure.
Large windows in every room amplify the amount of natural light. Rubber flooring reduces noise levels and worker fatigue, and ceiling-mounted patient lifts avert falls and injury. Upon entering any room, one will immediately find a hand hygiene sink; a washroom and shower are located at the head of the bed, so that patients have little distance to travel. The tower is the second and largest
phase of an ongoing $300-million multi- phase redevelopment that will also see 150,000 square feet of clinical renovations, including the expanded Slaight Family Emergency Department, and over two million square feet of infrastructure upgrades. It is intended to transform patient care in Canada in a way likely unimaginable in 1892, when the hospital first opened with 26 beds, six doctors, and four nurses. A new main entrance to St. Michael’s Hospital opened at the bottom of the Peter Gilgan Patient Care Tower in late September. Before this, patients accessed the new floors safely and horizontally from an adjacent building isolated from the rest of the facility.
“That’s another feature built into the design, and a benefit to pandemic situations where you can actually separate the floors,” says Frank Panici. His team designed for a nine-metre grid, with a floor-to-floor structure to accommodate any future alterations to the space. Large mechanical duct shafts were moved to an atrium location, so floor needs can be re- configured in the future without affecting the rest of the hospital.
Since the new floors were designed for infection control purposes, accelerating them came with opportunities to create capacity, as well as challenges to meet deadlines.
High standards
The pandemic both validates design features of the current CSA standard, which embraces learnings from previous epidemics such as SARS and H1N1, and reveals gaps and areas for improvement. All inpatient rooms in the tower are single-use only, a feature the standard applauds as a means to appropriately distance infected patients. “This provides more privacy, reduced noise levels, and better infection control, with space for families, leading to better comfort, recovery, and outcomes for patients,” says Margaret Moy Lum-Kwong. Such a design, however, is mostly seen in newer hospitals, says Michael Keen, Vice-President and Chief Planning Officer at Unity Health Toronto, and chair of CSA Group’s strategic steering committee for health and wellbeing. Only 10 to 20 per cent of single-patient rooms are found in older facilities, with the rest being semi- private, two-patient rooms, or three to four beds in a ward-like environment. “That really is a challenge,” he says. “As we redevelop facilities, moving to a more single-patient room environment will be
Hospital staff and contractors ‘rushed to ready the fourth and seventh floors within weeks’, making space for 33 single- patient critical care rooms about three months ahead of schedule.
30 Health Estate Journal August 2021
The new floors’ wide corridors now hold a series of private inpatient rooms, including three negative pressure isolation rooms, each with sliding glass doors that offer direct vantage points from a decentralised nurses’ station.
Courtesy of NORR Architects & Engineers Ltd
Courtesy of NORR Architects & Engineers Ltd
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