Small Details, Big Impact
A hospice is a unique space combining a host of functions in one building, but most of all designing the hospice from scratch gives us the opportunity to provide those we care for with excellent care whilst maintaining a homely feel. Here are a few examples of how we achieve that.
Vision Panels
All our patient bedroom doors have vision panels in them. For privacy, rooms such as these would normally have a clinical curtain inside them to screen the patient. However, at Pease Pottage we have been able to incorporate frosted bars within the vision panel so that by turning a lever on the door the whole panel can be obscured. It provides privacy, is better for infection control and keeps the room that much more homely.
Tidy Bedheads
Our bedrooms have a lovely wooden bedhead which helps create a cosy feel within the room. However, the bedhead needs to house quite a bit of kit: nurse call, medical gases and power sockets. To save cluttering up the bedhead we’ve positioned some power sockets on the reveal to the side – tidy!
Facilities Easy to Locate
As part of our general dementia friendly design we’ve worked hard to help navigating the rooms easy. In a bedroom the back panel to both the toilet and washbasin, as well as the toilet seat and supports, are a darker finish, making them easier to find, maintaining independence wherever possible.
Lots of Doors!
The new hospice is a large building. It has corridors with a whole host of rooms (over 200 in fact!), ranging from store cupboards to patient rooms. With so many rooms and doors, how do we help people find their way?
There of course will be signage and a warm welcome, but one thing we have been able to do is differentiate the doors. Those that lead to patient spaces such as the wards, consulting rooms and bedrooms are quite distinct – they are a lovely natural wood finish that stands out from the wall around it. Cupboards and staff only rooms have doors finished in white, making these much more part of the corridor. This makes it so much easier to find the right door, even before we get the signs in place – what a great idea!
