Birmingham Children’s Hospital (BCH) has admitted its first patients to what staff claim is Britain’s most advanced children’s kidney unit. At its heart is an entertainment system that includes a large, computerised “Imagination Light Canvas” in the reception area, manufactured by Philips, and the world’s first, that measures 3 m by 1.5 m, and features 144 LED points that react to pressure to display colourful animations and shapes.
Designed to treat young people from throughout the West Midlands, the £2.7 million facility replaces a cramped, unmodernised ward with few familyfriendly facilities and little natural light. Children travel from all over the region to the unit, with five-hour round trips to spend four hours a day, three or four days a week, on a haemodialysis machine, common. David Milford, lead renal consultant, BCH, said: “The huge amount of time children spend on dialysis makes their hospital environment particularly important. Although we have always given first-class medical service, the patient environment on the old unit was poor.” The new unit, designed in close consultation with children and their families, features play areas for younger children, an adolescent room, and facilities where parents can make a drink, relax, and even have a shower. Its design is based on King’s Fund guidelines to create “the very best possible healing environment”. Walls, curved and painted in soft blues and oranges, are dotted with artworks. The unit is deliberately designed to feel familiar to youngsters, and to be “more like a school than a hospital”. Lighting, meanwhile, uses coloured LEDs rather than bright white fluorescent tubes. The floor pattern resembles a pebbled stream. When children were asked what feature they most wanted, staff said “something with water” was top of the list. Rosemary Macri, chief executive of the British Kidney Patients Association, which donated £1 m towards the cost, said the unit “set a benchmark” for other hospitals. “What are particularly remarkable are the floor to ceiling windows, and the sense of light and space,” she said. “The unit is bright, open, and welcoming; everything the best modern hospitals should be.” The new unit is reportedly unique in Britain for bringing together, in a single clinical area, surgical, medical, and nursing expertise for children with diseases of the kidney and urinary system. It is also one of very few units to have dialysis and transplant facilities in the same clinical area.
