New hospital update A place that looks after you

Our patients are at the heart of everything we do, but to deliver outstanding care we need to nurture a healthy and motivated workforce.

Our new hospital should be a place that looks after everyone, including our people. A place that is designed to support your physical and emotional wellbeing and make you feel cared for, whilst you’re busy delivering vital care to patients.

Developing the design brief

Earlier this year we started to gather your thoughts on how the hospital should work for you, together with your ideas on how it should support patients and visitors. Working with Wild Courage, a public engagement company, we held several small focus groups with a wide range of staff.

At the focus groups, you said you wanted the new hospital to:

promote calmness and relaxation be bright and airy, warm and welcoming make you feel inspired as soon as you arrive One member of staff described the design of the new hospital as ‘a leap of the imagination towards a place of enablement, a place where unusual, fantastic and amazing things are possible.’

That’s a challenge we’re planning to rise to. Your ideas, alongside those of patients, carers and visitors, have helped determine the vision for the new hospital and have already fed into our Design Brief. Following the publication of the Design Brief our architects and design team have been holding further detailed workshops with staff groups to flesh out how to turn your ideas and needs into reality.

Continuing the conversation

Since the Wild Courage research Nicola Ainsworth, public health registrar, has spoken to over 200 of you across admin, therapies, junior doctors, clinical coding and many more. Across all staff groups you’ve raised the importance of having break and rest spaces - internally and externally. Some of you want space for social interaction and conversation, others space for quiet reflection.

Getting around the new hospital easily is also a high priority for you. Clear wayfinding throughout the building can help to reduce stress and help patients arrive at their destination in a calmer state.

All of this, we’re taking on board.

Sharing the designs

We’re really excited to be able to start sharing initial design drawings with you in early 2021, and will continue to seek your feedback as we further shape the design and function of the new hospital building.

Michael Meredith, director of strategy and estates and facilities, said:

Thank you all so much for taking the time to share your ideas, especially during this busy and stressful period. Your ideas have been instrumental in shaping how we design rest and wellbeing spaces in the new hospital. With your help, we’ll get this right first time. Keep feeding in, keeping having your say and together, we’ll build an amazing hospital for us all.

Thank you for all your ideas and your positivity so far. Your views really matter! If you have any more thoughts or ideas at any time, we would love to hear from you.

Join in, have your say: contact paht.newhospital@nhs.net.