Hospital tours shed light on future of surgery
On September 1, members of the VGH OR Renewal Project team toured the new Teck Acute Care Centre (TACC) at B.C. Children’s Hospital. With operating rooms (ORs) on two floors and a combined pre- and post-operative unit, the new facility sheds light on how we can accomplish the same at VGH.
“There were many design ideas that we could use or adapt for our own needs,” says John Filer, clinical project manager, “and it’s helpful to see the size and function of technology like OR tracker boards in a real-life setting.”
Susan Sandberg agrees. “The tour was helpful in seeing the possibilities of what a great Perioperative Care Unit and OR we can build,” says the PCC nurse clinician. “My eyes were opened to a wide variety of designs we can consider for patient care areas and options for equipment I didn’t know were possible.”
Hospital tours influence design
Our future’s looking bright: John Filer, clinical project manager, checks out the OR lights and booms at Toronto’s Humber River Hospital.
Many hospitals provide surgical services on multiple floors and VGH can too.
Scheduled to open in early 2021, the new OR suite on the third floor of Jim Pattison Pavilion North will be built directly above our current OR suite. The expansion will include 16 state-of-the-art universal ORs, a 40-bed consolidated pre- and post-operative unit, upgraded infrastructure and much more.
The TACC tour is just one of a number of visits contributing to the design of the third-floor OR suite. “Touring the Jim Pattison Outpatient Care and Surgery Centre in Surrey convinced us to include ceiling lifts in our new ORs,” says John.
For Kelly-Anne Karse and Michelle Kent, OR head nurses, TACC made an impression. From the spacious scale and vibrant colours of the ORs to their call buttons for code blue, anesthesia and staff assist, the tour brought design features into focus.
“It was nice to see the thought that was put into each area,” says Michelle. “I look forward to hearing how they operationalize their work on the two floors. For me, this is still a foreign concept that I’m trying to wrap my head around.”
Project update at Grand Rounds
To learn more about the project’s team’s hospital tours in Canada and the U.S., all VGH perioperative physicians and staff are invited to VGH Grand Rounds on October 11 (7 to 8 am) at the Diamond Health Care Centre Lecture Theatre.
Learn more
- VGH OR Renewal Project website (internal link on VCH Connect)
- VGH OR Renewal Project: VCH Medical Staff website (external link)
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- Mapping the future of pre- and post-op care
- Meet the docs designing VGH’s OR expansion