The worlds best NICU - what would it be like if you could design it?

[Christian Heiring]

Dear all @ 99NICU

I work in a busy level 3 NICU providing all NICU therapies including ECMO. We also provide intensive care treatment to a selected category of pediatrics patients up to 12-24 months in a designated are of the critical care department.

Providing a number of political and technical issues are sorted out we will probably be able to build a brand new building that will be going to house all the pediatric/neonatal and maternity services in our large tertiary institution.

We have been requested to start discussing how we would like a new unit (NICU/special care) to be designed. The new unit should be able to combine facilities for high-end intensive care while still being able to offer state of the art family centered care. A design providing optimal patient flow, work space and family comfort is high priority covering all areas of care from the non-intensive late preterm, to birthing suites, surgical room etc.

Furthermore we have been told that this innovative process should not be constrained by "money issues" as 2 large and very ambitious private funds have offered to fund the new hospital building providing that we can come up with sufficiently innovative ideas and proposals.

In order to get inspiration we will have to look abroad, and therefore I would like to ask people connected to 99NICU if any of you are either working in new well designed facilities or know of some in the area you work or perhaps are in a similar process. All ideas and inputs will be most welcome - specifically if any of you have thoughts about how the ideal NICU should like, please share

Many thanks in advance

Christian
Neonatologist
Copenhagen, Denmark

[Plyon0962]

We too are going to be designing a new unit...for our women's Infant's and childrens's hospital....we have seen lot's of changes over the years...and I think that you need to be able to offer several different types of areas....

 

and acute admission , and stabilzation area

a step down area that has more space but not separate rooms

an area for chronic infants that may need extra developmental therapys

then an area for seperate rooms for rooming in families

 

with at least 2 class rooms one for families and 1 for staff

with at least 2 lunch/ break rooms one for families and one for staff

2 family waiting areas one with a play area

call rooms for nnp and dr

 

and a office area and conf area

 

also it needs to be close to labor and delivery at least the at least the admission and stablization area does

 

I could probably keep going......

[Justinas]

I recomment to check out this webpage, which has also a documentary movie describing features of this NICU in the USA. http://www.chrichmond.org/Services/Neonatal-Medicine.htm

[Apgar10]

Wow! What an impressive NICU design in Richmond! We too just had our new NIC unit built 3years ago. Sad to say, RNs who work every single second in the unit were never asked for inputs in the design. Long story short, we found a lot of flaws, faults and inefficiencies with the design. Too late its already built. So here my two cents of advice, please solicit some inputs from staff who work 24hrs in your Unit, they are actually one of the best available resource you could use.

[JACK]

Apgar10 ..those are valid points. But sadly I believe this happens everywhere . The end-users are not consulted.

 

However everything is not lost. Good policies, some rearrangement can always make your NICU very nice !

[Plyon0962]

any suggestions and imput for things that you forgot or changes of things that ya'll did would be appreciated...we are still in the design phase....and have not broke ground yet on the new hospital bldg.