Located in Nedlands, the Perth Children’s Hospital (PCH) will be the new home for staff and services from Princess Margaret Hospital (PMH) in Subiaco, providing specialist paediatric care for the children and adolescents of Western Australia. The new hospital will be the sole dedicated children’s hospital for WA, providing the highest level of care to children from all over the state. PCH will have 298 beds, 48 more than PMH and the design of the building allows for future expansion.
It is planned that PCH will take its first outpatients from 24 October 2016, with the inpatient move (Final Move Day) and opening of the Emergency Department to take place on Sunday 20 November.
The Emergency Department at PCH will be physically 88% larger than PMH and will feature 22 single patient bays within the Acute Care Pod area. Each room will have three walls and a sliding telescopic smart glass door to provide acoustic and visual privacy for families and to benefit infection control within the department. There will also be two negative pressure isolation rooms within the department, each with an ante-chamber and ensuite. These rooms will be located directly behind triage to facilitate rapid isolation of infectious patients. All bays in the Acute Care area of the Emergency Department have been designed around two centralised staff stations allowing staff line of sight into patient rooms.
There are 3 dedicated Resuscitation bays (Medical, Trauma and Neonatal) with an XRay gantry servicing all 3 bays and with state of the art bedside pendants, point of care testing and automated dispensing machines for all medications. There is a large internal subwait area for patients being triaged to Fast track for minor injuries, Pod C for low acuity medical conditions and the psychiatric assessment Pod D.
The eleven bed Emergency Short Stay Unit is adjacent to the ED which is equipped with single rooms with ensuites in every room and one Negative pressure room with full ensuite and anteroom. This will be managed by the emergency staff 24 hours a day