CURRENTS TO CALM KIDS
Eight-storey Teck Acute Care Centre at B.C. Children’s Hospital has enhancements intended to lower patients’ anxiety and the perception of pain, Pamela Fayerman writes.
NGX Interactive’s Hanna Cho says kids can interact with animated creatures that dwell in the virtual aquarium at B.C. Children’s Hospital’s new Teck Acute Care Centre.
Medical treatments can be painful and frightening for children, not to mention distressing for their parents, so positive distractions and tranquil environments conducive to healing are core design principles and priorities in the new Teck Acute Care Centre at B.C. Children’s Hospital.
Studies have shown that viewing art, especially images of nature, can reduce stress and pain, so when the new building opens on Oct. 29, patients will see enhancements intended to lower anxiety, their perception of pain, the need for sedation in some cases, and even the length of their hospital stay.
The eight-storey centre is teeming with a carefully chosen collection of artistic elements — including murals, sculptures, digital installations and gardens that are at once whimsical, beguiling and uplifting.
The B.C. Children’s Hospital Foundation raised $6 million for the Children’s Healing Experience Project, believed to be the first in Canada to commission hospital art that evokes a sense of fantasy and optimism through images of landscapes, playful children and abstract figures.
Featured are the works of 65 artists, chosen from 1,200 proposals. One of the most nuanced, transcendent, museum-quality installations is Marie Khouri’s doves, which hangs from the ceiling of the lobby.
Whimsical artworks based on B.C.’s wildlife, forests, mountains and coasts are prominent in the spaces inside and outside the hospital building.
In the new emergency department — triple the size of the old one — local company NGX Interactive created a virtual aquarium designed to soothe spirits and banish the boredom that patients typically experience in waiting rooms. Through physical gestures, children can interact with animated marine creatures like turtles, starfish, stingrays, dolphins, tropical fish, shellfish and orcas, all in their underwater habitats.
Hannah Cho, a member of the NGX group that created the aquarium, said the installation was the result of a collaboration with the Vancouver Aquarium.
One transitioning display follows the journey of a turtle as it feasts on jellyfish in migration reefs along the B.C. coast and the southern tropics. Although the interactive display is largely inspired by B.C.’s marine life, one of the marine environments is a bioluminescent cave featuring neoncoloured underwater life against a dark screen.
The aquarium, installed on an entire wall, is so irresistible that Cho acknowledges it might be difficult to pry young patients away from the interactive screen when it’s time to get medical care in the new emergency department. “We want this to be engaging, but not so much that they won’t leave,” she said.
Information in the waiting room will show patients where they can pursue more marine adventures on an accompanying website. When they are on their personal devices at home or in hospital, patients will have access to a “digital scrapbook” to follow marine biologists as they study creatures. The website will also feature a marinethemed game.
The new emergency department has 55 treatment rooms, each equipped with a reclining chair to allow a family member get some rest during long visits. There are two critical care rooms next to the ambulance bay and five mental health rooms.
Colourful murals decorate long corridors leading to operating rooms and other hospital areas to distract young patients. The murals are meant to put children, no matter what age, in a more cheerful mood as they are wheeled on stretchers in and out of operating rooms.
“It’s not just about pretty walls. We’re trying to make the experience more pleasant,” said Eleanor Lee, an architect who has spent the last seven years leading the hospital redevelopment project, working closely with Affinity Partnerships in the public-private partnership and the design groups Zimmer Gunsul Frasca and CEI Architecture.
“It’s all about promoting healing and making children and their families feel confident and safe in this environment. We’re trying to normalize the hospital environment, make it seem less institutionalized,” she said during a tour of the new building.
Parent and youth advisory boards gave plenty of advice on the design and features of the new building, including the selection of art and even the palettes of calming colours on walls and floors.
The Teck Acute Care Centre also includes soccer and hockeythemed recreation rooms, sponsored by the Whitecaps and Canucks. Each team contributed $1 million to the hospital redevelopment project to help build and equip the rooms.
The hockey-themed room has a ceiling installation that mimics a jumbotron and houses a television, audio controls and Xbox. An electronic ticker tape creates the illusion of watching a game at Rogers Arena, but it can be programmed with messages of support for patients from families and friends. The room has closet handles that look like pucks and a reading nook shaped like a hockey stick. The Whitecaps room includes a projector that provides the outline of a soccer field so that kids can play soccer with a foam ball. Both of the social spaces are open 24/7.
All 231 patient rooms in the new Teck Acute Care Centre are private, but in the event of admission surges, many rooms can be made into doubles to create extra capacity. Hospital leaders say the loss of current revenue from private room surcharges is expected to be about $1 million a year, a sum that will have to be found “through efficiencies elsewhere.”
Patients and their families will have access to kitchens, showers, laundry facilities, storage lockers, family lounges, quiet rooms and play areas. Research shows that children recover faster when parents are present, so moms and dads and other loved ones will be encouraged to stay, sleeping on pullout beds or chairs that recline. Patient rooms include built-in fridges, spacious bathrooms and dry-erase whiteboards, so patients can share information about themselves and post photos or mementoes to help them feel encouraged and connected to loved ones.
Rooms have variable, adjustable lights and soundproofing as well as enough space for numerous health-care professionals to gather around the patient. Doors to rooms are sliding glass and doors between hospital units are opened by waving a hand to minimize risks of viral or bacterial transmission and hospital-acquired infections.
The new centre has 59,400 square metres of building space and almost as much (40,000 square metres) garden area. Circular and repeating patterns are believed to have a calming effect and expedite healing, so those principles have been incorporated into the landscape design. Patients and their visitors can see meditative inner courtyard gardens through the large windows of patients’ rooms. Some outdoor areas are playgrounds featuring sculpted topography while other outdoor areas include kid-height shrubs and low-pollen, droughtresistant plants.
Patient rooms and the rest of the building are flooded with natural light to help lift the mood of both patients and staff. Hospital architects and planners relied on evidence that exposure to nature and to natural light reduces stress and anxiety and can help children recover faster.
The centre is energy-efficient, using daylight, dimming and high-efficiency fixtures; thermally efficient exterior walls; green roofs to reduce stormwater run-off; windows that reduce heat loss in cold weather; low-flow plumbing fixtures; and water-conserving equipment.
There are eight large operating rooms, including five with advanced imaging capabilities such as CT scanners and interventional radiology.
The medical imaging department has two MRI suites as well as an MRI simulator to get children used to the banging sounds and the experience of going into an MRI.
The oncology procedure room, where children will undergo interventions like bone marrow aspiration, offers patients a spacewalk journey to take their minds off their treatment. The ceiling features twinkling LED lights recreating the Big Dipper and Orion. The experience offers patients the notion of moving from inside the International Space Station in the preparation room, to outer space in the procedure room, and then back to Earth in the recovery area, where coloured lights in the ceiling replicate the northern lights. The walls are decorated with murals of astronauts and planets. The hospital partnered with H.R. MacMillan Space Centre on the designs.
Care for oncology, hematology and bone marrow transplant patients includes extra infection control measures to prevent airborne and other infections. Some rooms have positive pressure airflow and a few rooms will be negative-pressure isolation rooms, which means filtered air will flow in but not out into other patient areas.