Hospital will try to make sick kids feel at home

 The giant steel structure going up on Mesa’s Dobson Road will transform the lives of thousands of East Valley children later this year.

SOUNDSLIDE: Listen to an interview with hospital’s pediatric administrator and view renderings

Banner hospital's Mesa office complex nearly finished

Banner Children’s Hospital’s new $356 million, seven-story tower is scheduled to open in November, bringing with it more space to serve the growing youth population.

“There is a big need to increase pediatric care in Arizona,” said Rhonda Anderson, pediatric administrator for Banner Children’s Hospital.

The hospital opened within confines of Banner Desert Medical Center in 2004, four years after the hospital’s pediatric unit opened. The groundbreaking for the new building took place in May 2007. Construction should be complete by August, with a move-in and plan to offers services by the first week of November.

The children’s hospital tower will add 464,000 square feet to Banner Desert Medical Center’s 83-acre campus. It is part of a one-million-square-foot expansion at the site.

The design team at the hospital looked at studies on environment and children’s healthcare to help create floors and rooms that will assist in the wellness of each patient.

The entrances on patients’ rooms will look like the entrance to a home. The theme on each floor will dictate the style of the “home,” such as log cabins and huts on the oncology floor or New York-style brownstones and Southern classic homes to mimic Atlanta on the adolescent floor.

Even the location of the various floors takes into consideration the best healing practices, Anderson said. For example, the oncology floor is on the seventh floor because of the vast views from the windows at that level.

Evidence shows the healing environment for cancer patients should include images inspired by nature, Anderson said.

“On the seventh floor, they’re closest to and can feel the sky,” she said during a tour of the building under construction.

Even the hallways will be designed to evoke tranquility — with paintings of swings on trees, lakes and snowy mountains.

The idea to create a comfortable environment for children starts before entering the building. A waterfall will greet visitors outside the hospital’s main doors, cascading over their heads and down into a shallow pool. The reception desk will be flanked by two “trees” and stained glass will encompass the chapel on the first floor.

Paintings of butterflies — a symbol of transformation into health — will fill the hallways. Nothing has been looked over, Anderson said, including the ceilings. While a patient is transferred on a stretcher, he or she will see lit “clouds” overhead. A changing constellation sky will hover over the lobby.

Designers kept the families in mind . Every room is private, with a large private bathroom and a couch that pulls out to a bed that can sleep two adults. Each floor will have a “kid-free zone” where adults can find computers to do research and a place to share thoughts and feelings with other parents.

A donation from NFL Hall of Fame quarterback Steve Young will help create the Forever Young Zone. In the large room, patients will be able to participate in theater performances on a center stage or watch movies on one of two large-screen televisions or a projector screen that will come down from the ceiling.

“Of course, it will be painted in (San Francisco) 49ers colors,” Anderson said.

The children’s hospital now has 137 beds. With the new tower, there will be 248 beds, 105 of them dedicated to neonatal intensive care, plus an additional 26-bed pediatric emergency room.

Banner Children’s Hospital floor-by-floor breakdown
First floor: Lobby, gift shop, lactation center, museum, cafeteria, offices, Pediatric Rehabilitation, Pediatric Outpatient Treatment Center, Pediatric Emergency Room

Second floor: Pediatric Intensive Care Unit, pediatric operating rooms, post- and pre-surgical care areas, chapel

Third floor: Forever Young Zone, shelled space for future pediatric intensive care unit, Neonatal Intensive Care Unit

Fourth floor: Infant/toddler general pediatrics

Fifth floor: School-aged general pediatrics; school for hospitalized patients

Sixth floor: Adolescent general pediatrics

Seventh floor: Pediatric Hematology/Oncology Unit

Every floor: Play rooms, toy closets and family lounges/quiet spaces

Source: Banner Children’s Hospital