Children and parents will ‘feel at home’

EVERY small detail in the design of the Nelson Mandela Children’s Hospital has been taken into consideration to make sure that its patients and their families “feel at home”.

The details are from the big windows to allow natural light to come in, the multiple playgrounds, the beautiful gardens, the colourful walls in the wards right down to the counters at the reception area.

“The height of the counters is low because we are going to admit children … the counters must be the height of a child,” said the hospital’s project manager Joe Seoloane.

“The children must be part of that process they cannot be seen as objects of getting into the hospital,” Seoloane said.

He said the design of the facility was to create a homely environment so that the sick children do not perceive the hospital as a “gory” place.

“We are creating a home away from home. We have created spaces around the hospital where siblings coming to see their sisters or brothers can be able to play and they will receive gifts from the hospital so that they don’t associate the hospital with a feeling that is gory and all those kind of things.”

Seoloane said the hospital would receive patients from across the country who would be referred by provincial hospitals.

He said it was therefore important for the hospital to cater for parents so that they could be close to their sick children.

“The last and most important thing is that at the top floor of the hospital we [accommodate] parents that [will] come from Lusikisiki, Tzaneen and deep rural KwaZulu-Natal who say ‘I don’t have any relative here’.

“We have rooms where those parents would be able to have home away from home [experience],” said Seoloane.

He said there were 38 rooms to cater for such parents. The parents would also have access to their own private parking, he said.

Seoloane said the hospital would also try to make the process of going for surgery operations and X-rays to be as familiar, less scary and comfortable as possible for the little patients.

The facility will ensure this by giving the children miniature versions or toys resembling the machines that will be used during the carrying out of these particular medical procedures.