Kettering General Hospital’s new £30 m Foundation Wing brings together several specialities previously housed in smaller, ‘more out-of-date’ accommodation, and should significantly improve the care offered to children, cardiac, and intensive care patients.
Built in close co-operation with clinical staff, it has a particularly impressive new 16-bed intensive care unit – where each bed has a flexible, ceiling-mounted pendant solution from Starkstrom, which worked closely with clinicians to determine the best pendant configurations. As part of the turnkey package, Starkstrom also supplied isolated and uninterruptible power supplies. It was selected after clinical and commercial representatives from the Kettering General Hospital NHS Foundation Trust visited, and were impressed by, other examples of its critical care pendant installations. Also decisive was its ability to act as a singlesource supplier. The Trust’s confidence proved well founded, when a flood mid-project meant rebuilding and recommissioning the pendants, which Starkstrom did quickly and efficiently at its Leicester factory. Dr Phil Watt, clinical lead for KGH’s intensive care unit, and a consultant anaesthetist, said: “Kettering General Hospital was England’ s first district hospital with an intensive care unit, in December 1962. Back then, our predecessors were at the cutting edge of care. Now we are back there, with one of the region’s most modern, spacious, and patient-centred, ICUs.”
