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PITTSBURG —
Crews are putting the finishing touches on Via Christi Hospital’s new third floor women’s center this week.
The center should be ready for the public blessing and dedication ceremony that is scheduled for 2 p.m. on Sunday. There will be an open house and tours for community members at 4 p.m., and refreshments will be served. Additionally, hospital employees will get tours early Friday morning and afternoon.
“We’ve heard back from employees how excited they are,” said Janelle Wade, director of women’s health. “As much as they’ve heard about it, they haven’t had a chance to see it.”
Center staff have started training for the new technology the center will have, including state-of-the-art operating equipment and infant warmers for the nursery that can measure infants’ weight, blend oxygen and have exam lights.
“They can do everything but shoot to the moon,” Wade said.
The center’s architects also wanted to incorporate a water theme into the center. But infection control guidelines won’t allow that, Wade said, so blue lights and glass have been installed strategically throughout the third floor.
Work on the center officially began in June after months of preparation. The floor originally housed three patient care wings, one of which was for pediatric care, and offices for education, respiratory therapy, social work and the hospital’s sleep laboratories. When the $8 million project is completed, the center will feature two new labor and delivery rooms, bringing the total to five; two triage rooms, which are used to diagnose patients and which the previous center did not have; a designated waiting area; enhanced central fetal monitoring; and 13 postpartum/gynecological rooms with a spa-type feel, Cesarean section rooms and a nursery. The whole floor will receive two-pane windows to help regulate heating and cooling costs, as will the second and fourth floors.
The labor and delivery rooms will be especially nice, Wade said. They will have designated waiting spaces for fathers, built-in cabinets and baby incubators, as well as dedicated lights and beds in each room.
The current women’s unit was opened in 1971, and while that doesn’t mean it has ever been unsafe, it hasn’t been state-of-the-art for a long time. The new center will include both technological and personnel improvements. From a technological perspective, nurses will be able to keep an eye on multiple babies from a central fetal monitoring station rather than watching one at a time from their bedside. The center will also employ a lactation consultant instead of a lactation specialist, which will boost its quality of care.
Crews are putting the finishing touches on Via Christi Hospital’s new third floor women’s center this week.
The center should be ready for the public blessing and dedication ceremony that is scheduled for 2 p.m. on Sunday. There will be an open house and tours for community members at 4 p.m., and refreshments will be served. Additionally, hospital employees will get tours early Friday morning and afternoon.
“We’ve heard back from employees how excited they are,” said Janelle Wade, director of women’s health. “As much as they’ve heard about it, they haven’t had a chance to see it.”
Center staff have started training for the new technology the center will have, including state-of-the-art operating equipment and infant warmers for the nursery that can measure infants’ weight, blend oxygen and have exam lights.
“They can do everything but shoot to the moon,” Wade said.
The center’s architects also wanted to incorporate a water theme into the center. But infection control guidelines won’t allow that, Wade said, so blue lights and glass have been installed strategically throughout the third floor.
Work on the center officially began in June after months of preparation. The floor originally housed three patient care wings, one of which was for pediatric care, and offices for education, respiratory therapy, social work and the hospital’s sleep laboratories. When the $8 million project is completed, the center will feature two new labor and delivery rooms, bringing the total to five; two triage rooms, which are used to diagnose patients and which the previous center did not have; a designated waiting area; enhanced central fetal monitoring; and 13 postpartum/gynecological rooms with a spa-type feel, Cesarean section rooms and a nursery. The whole floor will receive two-pane windows to help regulate heating and cooling costs, as will the second and fourth floors.
The labor and delivery rooms will be especially nice, Wade said. They will have designated waiting spaces for fathers, built-in cabinets and baby incubators, as well as dedicated lights and beds in each room.
The current women’s unit was opened in 1971, and while that doesn’t mean it has ever been unsafe, it hasn’t been state-of-the-art for a long time. The new center will include both technological and personnel improvements. From a technological perspective, nurses will be able to keep an eye on multiple babies from a central fetal monitoring station rather than watching one at a time from their bedside. The center will also employ a lactation consultant instead of a lactation specialist, which will boost its quality of care.
The renovation will also allow the hospital to provide a service it hasn’t in the past.
“When we have babies born, a lot of times if they are premature, they are delivered elsewhere,” Julianna Rieschick, the hospital’s vice president of patient care services, said in a recent article.
“After a time, they reach ‘feeder grower’ status, which means they just need to be monitored, but are stabilized and are growing fine. We will have the ability to keep those here, so the parents aren’t traveling so far to take care of their child. Having a baby is stressful as it is. The last thing we want parents to do is to travel. We want them to take care of the baby here, and that way we can take care of the community.”
The new women’s center is one of multiple modernizing projects Via Christi has recently undertaken. Starting eight years ago, the hospital built a new outpatient area on the west end, which includes the emergency room, Via Christi Heart Center and QuickCare. It added a new fifth-floor intensive care unit in 2006 and a cardiac step-down unit — literally, a step down from intensive care — in 2009. Last year, it completed an $800,000 renovation of the main lobby, added a $2.7 million linear accelerator to the cancer center and $1.5 million in new technology to the heart center. There also are plans to renovate the first floor chapel.
Dewitt & Associates of Springfield, Mo., is the main contractor for the project.
