Disclosure :: This post is sponsored by our partners at Our Lady of the Lake Children’s Hospital.
Smallest Ideas Are The Big Story At The New Children’s Hospital
On Oct. 5, the new Our Lady of the Lake Children’s Hospital opened its doors to the children of Louisiana and beyond.
It makes life-saving treatment and specialized care available to more children than ever. But it’s not only its size and scale that make the new children’s hospital such an amazing place.
What Makes Us Amazing?
It’s not the 500 physicians, nurses, clinicians and team members dedicated to treating children and families. It’s not its capacity to treat 100,000 patients a year, including 35,000 in the Emergency Department.
It’s not that the third floor is home to one of only eight satellite clinics of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. It is not the state-of-the-art trauma care administered 24/7 by board-certified pediatric specialists.
There’s no question all of those things made the new children’s hospital an instant game-changer in healthcare quality and access for the one million children who live in Louisiana.
What makes it amazing is the people who inspired its most impactful features: the children.
“Children deserve a hospital space that embraces, comforts and energizes them and allows them to be with their families,” said Dr. Trey Dunbar, president of Our Lady of the Lake Children’s Health.
Children and Their Families are Top Priority
And so from the very first planning meeting, the needs and concerns of children and their families topped the list of priorities.
No one understands better than parents of children who’ve been in the hospital what kind of anxieties, discomforts and disruptions can happen.
Which is why the Family Advisory Council was created. A volunteer group of parents of former and current patients, the advisory council meets regularly and suggests timely ideas to make the hospital experience better. They inspired some of the new hospital’s most amazing impactful features and comforts:
- State-of-the-art washing machines and dryers available free of charge for families on every floor as well as free vending machines that provide ice, ice water and coffee
- Large patient rooms that provide more privacy and include comfortable sofa sleepers and private bathrooms with showers
- Playful wayfinding signage with brightly colored scenes that come to life with whimsically drawn animals and birds familiar to kids from all over Louisiana
- Interactive play equipment and covered seating outside as an option for family dining
- Playrooms on every floor with patient rooms
- A team of Child Life specialists trained to help children cope with their hospital stay through stress reduction, age-appropriate education and fun activities
- Dry-erase boards in patients rooms that contain all the information parents want to know, like the names of their child’s nurses
- Extra-large patient rooms reserved for families with children receiving end-of-life care so they can stay together.
Family laundry centers on every floor of the new children’s hospital feature a pair of combination washing machine-dryers that are free for patient families to use.
These and many other elements of Our Lady of the Lake Children’s Hospital were informed and inspired by families of children who have been there and who have gone on to share their time and energy so that things might be just a little bit better for families in the future.
More than anything, it’s the spirit of giving and healing that inspires the children’s hospital team.
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