By Fatima Baalbaki
Nurses say they were forgotten in the planning of the $15-million addition to Centretown’s Saint-Vincent Hospital.
The new wing, which has been open since December of last year, does not take into consideration the needs of the nurses, they say.
“It is a much more pleasant environment,” says Judy Rosak, a nurse at the hospital since 1975, “but from a nurse’s perspective, it’s not well planned.”
On each floor, the two locations that are essential to a nurse’s job are the nurses’ station and the supply room, she says.
The new wing has the nurses’ station at one end of the unit and the supply room all the way down at the other end.
Nurses say this slows them down and has them running back and forth between the two locations all day.
“We don’t have our own bathrooms,” Rosak says. “We have to use the same ones that visitors use.”
She points out that the new wing has one bathroom in every semi-private room, even though most patients do not use them due to health conditions.
Mill and Ross Architects planned the new wing in consultation with the senior administration of the hospital. The senior administration did ask for the nurses’ input, but Rosak says their recommendations were not followed.
Despite this disappointment, Eva Sitton, an 81-year-old patient at the hospital, says the nurses are still doing a wonderful job.
“I have found them cheerful, professional, and just grand,” she says. “They care.”
Sitton has been at the hospital since April 2002 and moved into the new wing as soon as it opened.
The new wing is only the first part of the renovation project at the hospital.
New features in the wing include brighter-coloured walls and floors, bigger rooms, wheelchair-accessible windows, and more storage space on every floor.
According to the hospital’s renovations plan, the project, which started late 2002, is expected to be finished in January 2006.
Tracy Donahue, the fundraising campaign co-ordinator of the project, says the approximate cost of the renovations totals $35 million.
They include a new inner courtyard-like atrium with two banks of elevators, climate control, upgraded resident rooms and hallways, physiotherapy rooms on each floor and a new outdoor terrace and garden.
The atrium is expected to completed by December and the renovation of one wing will be finished every six months.
“They could’ve gotten better value for the money,” Rosak says, adding that seeing the patients more comfortable is more important to her. “But it does give you a feeling of hope.”