HEALTHCARE CONSTRUCTION
Top left: The 40-metre link corridor connecting the concept ward to the existing hospital. Images on the wall feature a full history of the hospital, narrated through imagery and text. Top right: The nurse touchdown stations allow a single member of staff to view four single side rooms simultaneously, ‘providing the same amount of visibility as a multi-bed bay, but with the privacy of a single patient room’. Bottom left: Visitors could view the concept ward design through a VR headset before completion, which enabled staff to familiarise themselves with the space. Bottom middle: Vision panels between beds in the two four-bedded bays allow for privacy and visibility for patients, while the staggered bed layout ensures patients are not directly positioned opposite each other. Bottom right: A nursing station located in the centre of the ward opposite the two four-bedded bays.
smoothly from the production facility in Yorkshire to the site, as they were pretty wide loads. The modules measure up to 4.2 m wide, and the heaviest weighs 22.5 tonnes. They key was to ensure that the crane was in position ready to receive the units as soon as they arrived.”
Evaluating the nursing and patient experience Once the new ward is occupied, Paul Morris and his team will be evaluating a number of aspects of the nursing and patient experience – looking in particular at patient experience, length of stay, infection control, and how nursing practice differs when looking after patients in single-bedded rooms and four-bedded bays. The team will also be monitoring several elements of the new building’s performance. He said: “While we will primarily be harnessing the research to help us plan for our new hospital, we will also look to make the information more widely available.” The Chief Nurse explained that he and his team had already worked with ward staff in preparation for them moving over and needing to adapt to different working methodologies, and new technology.” I finished by asking what aspect of
the new ward building most excited him. He said: “I think the scheme has been an amazing opportunity to bring together modern-day healthcare architecture,
50 Health Estate Journal August 2023
and patient and staff views, and to work in partnership to design a usable space that supports physical and patient wellbeing, with added benefits such as enhancements to infection control, rest, mobility, the ability for patients to shower in their own en-suite facilities, and improvements in privacy and dignity. I’ve already referred to the setting, and the indoor and outdoor space, but we also anticipate improvements to technologies within medicines management, education, and training. We also expect the new ward to enable us to address some of the everyday frustrations in healthcare, such as inadequate equipment space for storage, medicines management, and for updating electronic records. We’ve attempted to design out these issues. On the maintenance front, Health Spaces has worked with us to ensure that the space can be easily cleaned and decontaminated. “What we have aimed to do in designing
our Concept Ward is to take all the frustrations our staff and our patients feel when we are working and caring for people in our current hospital environment, national and international research, and best practice, and amalgamate all this into one setting.”
The construction elements A couple of days after discussing the clinical and site-related drivers for the scheme with Paul Morris, I talked through
some of the key construction elements with Health Spaces’ Nigel Thompson. He said: “My team’s first real involvement on site was in June 2022, with our initial site survey. This entailed taking window samples to understand the make-up of the ground to calculate structurally what foundations we would need. We didn’t need to dig too deep before we found clay, and there was no contamination evident. We also involved a specialist to conduct a UXO assessment to ensure there were no unexploded bombs, given that the Norfolk coast was targeted by German bombers during World War II. Fortunately nothing was found, but the UXO survey was required as part of planning consent. We did, however, brief all who would be working on the site of there being some risk of finding unexplored ordnance.” The new ward building is located close
to Paediatrics and a cancer ward. Nigel Thompson explained: “Site access was, in fact, quite straightforward, although bringing the modules in proved a little challenging, because some are 14 metres long. After completing the site and UXO surveys, we began our groundworks early last October, which included diverting a mains water supply and HV cable. The priority was to get the site ready for the building, and with many of the patient rooms incorporating en-suites, we had to install a number of pop-ups for drainage. The most involved element was probably
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