Patients and nurses will see a lot of each other when the new surgical inpatient unit at Dubbo Hospital becomes operational next year.
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Three nurses’ stations positioned at intervals along the unit and large observation windows in single rooms will help in the treatment of patients.
Hospital general manager Debbie Bickerton said the design of the new unit was driven by “users and clinicians” who successfully argued that bathrooms should be moved to the back of the single rooms to allow for the installation of windows beside entrance doors.
“We really fought for it,” she said. “It maximises observation of the patient and the ability of the patient to see the staff as best as possible.”
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Inadvertently, the locating of the bathrooms to the back of the rooms led to the creation of space for carers.
The so-called “carer’s zone” in each single room will have a couch with in-built storage that converts into a single bed at night.
The 34-bed unit with 14 single rooms and 10 double rooms has required the construction of a third storey on the hospital’s clinical services building, the focus of the $91.3 million stage one and two redevelopment.
On Tuesday Ms Bickerton took her executive team on a tour of the unit that may be ready to take patients in April. She pointed out many of the unit’s features including two single rooms with hoists for bariatric patients, isolation rooms, floor-to-ceiling windows capturing natural light and a patient lounge with a view.
Ms Bickerton said the new unit would provide a “much nicer journey for patients”. “The old unit is fairly dated, cramped and has four-bed rooms,” she said. “It has staff at one end and patients at the other end.”
The general manager said the new unit was “”supersized” at more than 2000 square metres. She said its completion “should not be too far away” but it would not receive patients until the construction of a “link corridor” was finished next year.
In the interim, commissioning of services such as airconditioning and plumbing will take place after which staff will be invited into the unit for orientation in areas such as fire safety and use of a “new nurse call bell system”. The unit is being built under the $150 million stage three and four redevelopment of the hospital.
