Working with the clinical team, we identified space to expand the unit footprint and offload non-essential program to other parts of the Hospital. The feasibility study addressed renovating the unit largely in place with a phased approach while finding a compromise between clinical capacity and efficient construction phasing.

The expansion allowed for the creation of a dedicated labor and delivery triage unit which serves as the intake point for laboring women. From this point, patients are either admitted to the Hospital into the antepartum unit, or taken into a labor room for delivery. The unit includes five exam rooms and associated staff support spaces such as a work room, medication room, and lab.

Most notably, this expansion created a new registration desk and arrival sequence adjacent to an elevator lobby and corridor intersection. The desk is situated to provide sight lines for both staff and patients and provide wayfinding to the unit. The finish palette for the area takes inspiration from hospitality spaces, creating a calm environment with patterned glass, neutrals, and wood tones.

The layout of the renovated Labor and Delivery Unit proper took careful planning and creative use of space. By relocating some staff spaces such as locker rooms and call rooms to another floor, a large block of space was opened up for a new central nurse station with communal work desk allowing better collaboration among nurses, residents, and physicians.

Since the unit is being renovated in place, the design attempts to use the existing divisions between rooms so that phased construction does not intrude on operational clinical areas. This proved to be challenging as existing labor rooms are well undersized for current requirements and also lacked dedicated bathrooms.

We creates a few prototypical layouts which could be adjusted to fit different scenarios. During the design process, the contractor built a full scale mock-up of a room which the staff used to validate everything from the location of the bed in the room, to number and location of electrical and med gas outlets, to locations of monitors and charting computers.

Careful consideration was also given to the various staff support spaces such as medication rooms, equipment storage rooms, lab, and soiled workroom so that new spaces were built for these functions before existing space was incorporated into other areas.