| Award-winning hospice project opens |
| Thursday, 21 May 2009 | |
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Nightingale Associates was proud to attend the opening of St Francis Hospice, a project that it has worked on as part of the King’s Fund 'Enhancing the Healing Environment’ programme. The project pushed forward the boundaries with regards to its design innovation and recognised links between modern, bright environments and patients’ well-being and enjoyment of their surroundings.
Having been successful in securing a £600k capital projects grant from the Government, the aim of the innovative King’s Fund grant and development programme was to encourage and enable local health teams to work in partnership with service users to improve the environment in which they deliver care. It was clinician led, using a multi-disciplinary project team. The main aim of the project was to achieve a physical improvement that brings demonstrable benefit to an area used by patients.
Saint Francis Hospice’s initial proposal was to refurbish their 22- year-old In-Patient Unit and other patient areas (including corridors), and to build a small extension and refurbish their 13-year-old Day Hospice. However, as Nightingale Associates began to question this approach, its team explored several options which reconfigured the internal layouts to make more use of existing spaces available. The conclusion to this process was the proposed extension became unnecessary, thus saving the vital Mainly funded by the Department of Health, the project has been further facilitated by Help the Hospices, a national umbrella organisation for local hospices. The success of the project has centred around extensive consultations, which were undertaken with the Hospice’s project team, which ensured that managers, staff, patients and visitors were involved at all stages in identifying improvements and ensuring that the design team were meeting the brief set. Following successful delivery, the project has been entered into the 2009 RIBA Awards |
