Orlando Health Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children, located in Florida, opened more than 30 years ago. Now, the hospital’s hematology and oncology unit has a new look and feel, as well as the benefit of several architecture and engineering updates,to welcome patients and their families and to improve their experience.
To give the hospital staff a better idea of the coming changes, the project team created mock-ups of an entire patient room. They built everything out of cardboard and simple materials to walk everyone through the space and get their input during early stages of design.
Today, walking into the patient rooms, eyes are immediately drawn to the custom seascape murals on the wall running along the patient bed. Each of the underwater scenes, designed on wall-protective material, present a different experience and focus, from sea turtles and sunken ships to sea ruins and treasure chests.
All new flooring also finds its way into the patient rooms and corridors. Bright blues and grays highlight the different zones in a patient room for the patient, family and clinical team. The new finishes, floors and paint are pulled into the main corridors and into children’s activity rooms.
The bathrooms in each patient room are also refurbished with new plumbing, showers and toilet fixtures. In addition, the new sinks outside the bathrooms are surrounded in new decorative tile.
There is also more space for family, particularly the patients’ parents who, before the renovation, had to sleep on a small bench if they wanted to stay in the same room as their child. Also, a bed was custom-designed that folds down horizontally, specifically to fit the 20 rooms at the facility.
The fourth-floor project was completed on schedule in February. The Design-Assist project delivery brought architect RS&H together with contractor CPPI in the schematic design phase, with PMA handling project management. Coordination among the design and construction teams, security and facility management helped minimize disruption to surrounding floors and departments throughout the project.
