VJH Polson Tower Feature Stories

New Technology Supports Better Patient Care

When physicians and staff begin treating patients in the brand new VJH Polson Tower in September, they’ll also be doing so with state-of-the-art technology.

“Obviously, there’s nothing more important than bedside care, but the technologies used in this building will allow nurses and doctors to be more efficient in providing the best care possible,” says Dan Gagné, Network Projects Coordinator with Interior Health’s IMIT department.

There will be a new nurse call system that allows the nurse to speak directly with the patient. Each patient will have a call cord at the bedside, and will be able to communicate via a two-way speaker. The nurse call system will also be tied into the other communication tool in the new tower: Vocera.

Vocera is a hands-free staff-to-staff communications device that helps locate colleagues right away, without having to go through the traditional phone or pager system.

“The advantage is, for instance, if a doctor is doing something in a sterile environment, they can answer a call hands-free without having to stop what they’re doing, or without having to use the phone,” says Gagné.

A third advancement is the integration of new patient monitoring technology, including the Intelliview Clinical Suite. The ICS will allow remote bedside monitoring by, for example, a doctor in his office or a nurse at a nursing station, as well as simultaneous monitoring of multiple patients.

Other exciting technological improvements in the tower include asset tracking devices to keep better track of things such as IV pumps. Phones and computers will have greater functionality. Every floor will have video conferencing facilities. And the pneumatic tube system will allow for more efficient transfer of lab specimens.

See the full Health in Motion newsletter for April 2011.

Women’s and Children’s Health Services a First for VJH

The newly-named Women’s and Children’s Health Centre on the fourth floor of the Patient Care Tower will bring a whole new way of doing things to Vernon Jubilee Hospital.

The maternity service in the tower will have seven spacious, family birthing rooms ready to host the new Labour, Delivery, Recovery, Postpartum (LDRP) model of care. Each room has state-of-the-art equipment that can be tucked away after use to provide a more home-like atmosphere.

Across the hall, the nursery has an expanded footprint, with individual bays. This will offer doctors, midwives and nurses the space they require, while also providing families plenty of room when spending time with their little one. An added feature in the new space is a “care by parent” room. Out-of-town parents whose child needs to be in the special care nursery can use this room to stay close to their baby overnight.

Paediatric outpatient services now has two treatment rooms and a nursing sub-station to greet our children. There are also two specialized rooms offering the latest technology, including allowing efficient collaboration with BC Children’s Hospital.

See the full Health in Motion newsletter for March 2011.

Ambulatory Care Gets Elbow Room

When the new Ambulatory Care Department opens in the VJH Polson Tower staff who regularly work in this area will be very, very happy. In the new tower, Ambulatory Care will be more than three times the size of the current area: the Cardio Pulmonary Unit will be 50% larger, there will be an addition of 1345 square feet of clinic space, and there is ample room for future growth.

“The new space will have a positive impact on patients and staff, it will be a much better patient care environment,” said Penny Liao, Ambulatory Care Manager.  Liao is a relatively new member of the VJH team, but it didn’t take her long after her September start date to understand the real need for the new patient care tower.

“The level of care at VJH is excellent in spite of current space constraints,” said the former pediatric nurse manager from BC Children’s Hospital in Vancouver. “But there are real pressures created by trying to provide the breadth of programming we provide in a relatively small area.”

“The move to the new Polson Tower will be a huge improvement,” said Liao. “One example is the IV therapy space. In the new Ambulatory Care, each patient will have their own private area as opposed to the large open room now used. We’ll have dedicated patient waiting and change areas and the whole area will be flooded with natural light. The effect on the patient experience and access and flow will be tremendous, and they will continue to receive the excellent care we always provide.”

See the full Health in Motion newsletter for February 2011.

New Operating Theatres Characterized by Light and Space

Doctors and nurses at Vernon Jubilee Hospital have been operating for years in the surgical equivalent of a closet. So when new operating theatres open in the VJH Patient Care Tower in September 2011, surgical teams may be forgiven for thinking they are now operating in the equivalent of, well, a theatre.

Each of the new ORs is 700 square feet, compared to an average of about 465 square feet in the current hospital. The total clinical space available on the surgical floor doubles to 34,000 square feet from 17,500 in the current space. And the MDR area is almost twice as large as the existing space.

Space is only part of what makes the new tower a first class health care environment. It’s really the organization of space, the co-location of departments, new communication technologies and the advanced integration of equipment that will benefit patients the most.

MDR is right beneath the ORs, and there are separate dedicated elevators for clean and soiled equipment. There is enough room for case carts to be prepared in MDR.

And the pre-surgical screening area, where patients are admitted and interviewed prior to their procedures, is much more modern, with individual rooms, providing a level of privacy and confidentiality never before seen at VJH.

From larger better-designed spaces, to more natural light and healthier working conditions, to technology that helps us do our jobs better and take better care of patients the new tower is going to bring benefits everywhere you look.

See the full Health in Motion newsletter for January 2011.

First Clean Sweep a Real Team Effort

The first of two “clean sweeps” took place at Vernon Jubilee Hospital on November 19. Staff and volunteers worked hard all week to collect all the odds and ends that have been hanging around the building for years and won’t be making the journey to the new Patient Care Tower.

At the end of the day, there was a 30 yard container of garbage and a 15 yard container for recycling. Not only that, but local volunteer organization, the North Okanagan Valley Gleaners, hauled away two 5-ton truckloads of re-usable supplies that they will be packaging up and sending to Zimbabwe to help the less fortunate.

VJH Housekeeping Supervisor Chris Moger has been working on this project for weeks. The Bio Med and Maternity departments did a fantastic job of purging. Food Services Supervisor Cathie Stewart was in charge of creating the awesome goodie trays that helped keep everyone’s energy up during the event. Staff members Lyle Hinds and Bill Hoffman had super attitudes and worked hard to get the mountains of materials picked up, and Todd Valouch also went out of his way to make the day a success. Now that’s teamwork!

See the full Health in Motion newsletter for December 2010.

Introducing the Care Link Team

You may not know it, but there is a team of dedicated VJHers who are really the engine driving the change from today to tomorrow and helping us all as we prepare for the big transition to the new VJH.

The Care Link Team provides a communication bridge between administration and front line staff, generates ideas and suggestions to help with impacts of transition on staff, and help build enthusiasm and excitement in anticipation of the grand opening of the new tower in September 2011.

See the full Health in Motion newsletter for November 2010.

VJH Polson Tower Being Built to LEED Gold Environmental and Energy Standards

Did you know the new Vernon Jubilee Patient Care Tower is going to be a “green building,” and is being built to LEED Gold standard? What is LEED?

LEED is an acronym for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design. The LEED Green Building Rating System is a program that evaluates performance from a whole building perspective over a building’s life cycle, providing a definitive benchmark for what constitutes a “green building.” In Canada the Canadian Green Building Council (CaGBC) monitors and certifies building under the LEED rating System.

The rating system is organized into five categories: Sustainable Sites, Water Efficiency, Energy & Atmosphere, Materials & Resources and Indoor Environmental Quality. An additional category, Innovation & Design Process, addresses sustainable building expertise as well as design measures not covered under the five categories.

LEED is based on accepted energy and environmental principles and strikes a balance between established practices and emerging concepts. It is a performance-oriented system where credits are earned for building to address specific environmental impacts. Different levels of green building certification are awarded based on the credit requirements achieved and total points earned.

The LEED rating system awards points for meeting specific performance criteria that outperform typical standard building practice. Improved building performance is certified with ratings – Certified, Silver, Gold or Platinum – based on the total number of points earned by a project. The VJH tower was designed to achieve LEED Gold, which when certified will make it one of only a handful of hospital in Canada which have achieved this rating. Here’s how it’s doing it.

LEED Category – Water Efficiency
1. Every drop counts. Water efficient fixtures have been installed to reduce water consumption by more than 30%.
2. Rain is a resource. The high efficiency irrigation system is fed by a cistern that collects stormwater from the roof and other hard surfaces around the site.

LEED Category – Materials and Resources
3. Lean and mean. Building materials consist of at least 20% recycled content.
4. Stay close. More than 30% of materials were sourced regionally, ensuring products were extracted and manufactured within 800 km if transported by truck, or 2400km if transported by rail or water.

LEED Category – Light Pollution Reduction
5. No trespassing. Site lighting has been designed to eliminate light trespass from the building and grounds, protecting the nocturnal environment.

LEED Category – Indoor Environmental Quality
6. Take a deep breath. This facility used only low-emitting adhesives, sealants, paints, coatings, carpet systems and composite wood products to reduce occupant exposure to toxins and support high quality indoor air.
7. Breathe Easy. Air quality was protected during construction. In addition, the building will be flushed with outdoor air before occupancy.
8. Spic and span. Only environmentally-friendly housekeeping practices and cleaning products will be used to protect indoor air quality and environmental health.

LEED Category – Energy and Atmosphere
9. Lighten up. This building uses approx 40% less energy than a conventional building, due in part to high efficiency mechanical systems and high efficiency building envelope components such as insulation and windows
10. Operation optimize. This facility includes extensive water and energy metering and reports on building performance hourly. This strategy will allow building operators to ensure performance is optimized at all times, reducing the building’s ecological impact, and ensuring a comfortable indoor environment for occupants.

New Emergency Department Will Offer Space and Privacy

When John Cullen walked into the Vernon Jubilee Hospital ER on his first day of work in 2002, his first thought was, “Wow, what an incredibly small space.”

Cullen, a registered nurse and the manager of the Vernon Jubilee Hospital (VJH) emergency department, knows what he’s talking about. He’s worked in ERs around the world, including Williams Lake, the Lower Mainland, Ireland and Saudi Arabia.

But the Okanagan lifestyle and the chance to be near family drew the Kootenay-born Cullen to Vernon. In that respect, he’s just like the patients he and his staff see every day, many of whom have migrated to the Okanagan from other parts of the country and world.

The growth has been so explosive that many services haven’t been able to keep up. VJH’s ER is no exception. It was too small when Cullen arrived, and it’s much too small now.

“The space we’re working in now reflects the fact the hospital was built for an environment of much less staff and much less patients.”

Indeed, when Dr.  Frank Ballauf was hired as a part-time ER doc in 1993, VJH was a much different place.

“There used to be no full-time coverage in the ER overnight,” said Baullaf, who started working full time in the ER in 1996. “[General practitioners] would cover the overnight shift, often by phone from home.”

Things have changed significantly in the 17 years he has been working in the ER, he said.

“The complexity and volume of cases has certainly gone up. More and more elderly people mean greater complexity of care, complicated cases, higher volumes.”

And with the growth of the international adventure tourism trade, more tourists mean greater volumes, and often more trauma cases.

“The current space is small, antiquated with not a lot of privacy,” said Ballauf, noting that examination spaces in the current ER are simply beds separated by curtains.

And that’s no good, whether you’re a doctor bumping into the nurse next door, or the patient trying to maintain some dignity while suffering a debilitating illness.

“Privacy and physical space are incredibly important – [doctors] don’t know exactly what [they] are dealing with, and the patient wants to have the privacy to be sick.”

That’s all about to change. In exactly one year, the new Patient Care Tower at VJH will begin taking patients.

The new emergency department, which will be situated on the ground floor of the new tower, will be four times larger than the present ER.

All emergency stretcher bays have three hard walls and glass doors to improve patient confidentiality, comfort and can be used to isolate patients during pandemics.

There will also be much more space for the Minor Treatment area and Rapid Assessment Zone – processes in place to help with patient flow-through – which help reduce patient wait times, said Ballauf.

“The tower addresses the need for more physical space. A more efficient ER will help with patient flow to the wards. The new ICU and ORs will bump up the level of care that can be offered and will facilitate patient movement as well.”

The new ER will also include more triage space, three additional urgent emergent exam spaces plus capacity for two future spaces, a second secure room and double the number of ambulance bays from two to four.

“The fact that we will have dedicated areas for specific programs and processes means that the whole floor will be better coordinated than it is right now, said Cullen. “It’ll be like a well-oiled machine.”

See the full Health in Motion newsletter for October 2010.