Projects: Health & Wellness
Foothills Medical Centre Ward of the 21st Century
Calgary, Alberta
Unit 36 or "Ward of the 21st Century" is a living laboratory for innovation in healthcare, located in the Foothills Medical Centre. This 36-bed medical teaching unit was completed in 2005 and sets a new benchmark for inpatient wards.
Flexibility, high-tech communications, and ergonomic design were combined to create the new 23,455 sf. state-of-the-art healthcare facility. The Ward's design aimed at accommodating creativity, new technology, education, and providing the space to evolve and build new paradigms of healthcare delivery. The $5 million facility optimizes medical teaching opportunities and provides safe, efficient, and effective care for patients with a variety of complex medical conditions.
SAHURI carefully considered every aspect of patient care - from physical design, ergonomics, and communication technology, to the way medical residents are taught. Unit 36 features 28 private rooms with full wheelchair accessibility, 10 private rooms with negative air isolation capability for effective management of infectious disease outbreaks, enhancements for infection control, and a four-bed observation ward complete with bedside retractable toilets and dedicated support /observation space for acute patients. It offers flexibility in the form of moveable walls between rooms that can be used to join or isolate patients depending on their medical needs.
Duplicate medical gases at each bed provide the capability of adding a second patient to each room in the event of a disaster or pandemic, and patient vital sign monitoring with remote sensing technology is also included. Finally, the Ward accommodates complete wireless access, and dedicated education rooms that optimize medical teaching and provide space for teleconferencing and other teaching functions.
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