How to build a world-class children's hospital – LIVE
Nov 13, 2024
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Thomas Frandsen, Chief Medical Officer at the Mary Elizabeth Hospital in Copenhagen, leads an innovative shift in pediatric healthcare through a play-centered design. He discusses the decade-long journey to create a hospital that prioritizes the well-being of children, teens, and families. The conversation highlights the transformative power of play in enhancing communication and relationships in a medical setting. They delve into strategies that integrate play into medical procedures, fostering a supportive environment and improving overall patient experiences.
The Mary Elizabeth Hospital revolutionizes pediatric care by centering its design and operations around play to enhance patient experiences.
A holistic approach is implemented to ensure coherent patient pathways, providing families with continuous support throughout their healthcare journey.
Deep dives
Revolutionizing Pediatric Care Through Play
The Mary Elizabeth Hospital aims to transform the healthcare experience for children by integrating play into its core design and operational principles. This innovative approach positions play not merely as a recreational activity but as a vital tool for communication and relationship-building between healthcare providers and young patients. By centering the design of the hospital around play, staff can create a more welcoming environment, facilitating better interactions and reducing anxiety for children undergoing medical treatments. This philosophy stems from the understanding that children, regardless of their health status, maintain their playful nature, and this insight has been a guiding principle throughout the hospital's development.
Challenges and Triumphs of Integrating Play
Implementing a playful approach within a professional healthcare setting has necessitated careful consideration of how play can coexist with medical professionalism. The staff has engaged in ongoing discussions to navigate the fine balance between maintaining authority and fostering a playful atmosphere, ensuring that play enhances rather than detracts from their professional duties. This shift has required substantial training for the staff, emphasizing that play is a tool for building trust with patients and aiding in therapeutic processes. By recognizing that play can be adapted to various contexts, staff have successfully integrated playful elements into procedures, enhancing both the patient experience and treatment outcomes.
Creating Coherent Patient Pathways
A critical focus for the hospital is the establishment of coherent patient pathways that extend beyond the hospital experience, addressing what happens before and after treatment. This holistic approach seeks to ensure that families receive comprehensive support throughout their healthcare journey, minimizing abrupt transitions between different healthcare settings. Collaborations with other medical institutions have been initiated to share knowledge and best practices in creating these pathways, emphasizing the importance of continuity in care. By tackling the challenges that arise as patients move through the healthcare system, the hospital strives to make long-term positive impacts on both children and families.
What foundational ideas should guide our thinking around future approaches to care?
In 2026, the Mary Elizabeth Hospital in Copenhagen will open to the public. It is a hospital that will revolutionise the experience for children, teens, pregnant women and their relatives before, during and after treatment. And they are doing this by centering the hospital all around play.
Alongside Elisabeth Ida Ginsberg and Thomas Frandsen the hospital’s chief project manager and chief medical officer respectively, ReD’s Anne Mette Worsøe Lottrup and Iago Noguer Storgaard discussed how play became the foundational idea to both the hospital’s design principles and day-to-day operations.
A project that has been over a decade in the making, they also discuss how an idea, or human insight such as play, can be guarded as the governing principle through something as complicated and large-scale as building a new hospital.
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