Montreal Children's Hospital Pediatric Psychiatry team gets ready to make their move
Michèle Paquette, Nurse Manager of the Pediatric Psychiatry Care Program at the Montreal Children’s Hospital (MCH), can’t wait to move to the Glen. Presently, the Child Psychiatry department, Inpatient Unit and Day Program are located on the same floor at the MCH, but in their current set-up, space is at a premium. “As an interdisciplinary team we work very closely together,” says Ms. Paquette. “The new design at the Glen will give us much more flexibility to work with our patients and their families, and improve how we work with each other too.”
The department’s inpatient population includes children and adolescents with acute mental health problems. The team also sees patients in its Day Program.
From the ground up
The Psychiatry unit at the Glen will be located on the 7th floor of Block B, one of the two buildings that will make up the new MCH at the Glen. The initial planning of the new unit started several years ago and with such a strong emphasis on interdisciplinary care that a cross-section of team members was asked for their input. “We depend on the interaction between the different disciplines to help patients and their families,” says Ms. Paquette, “so observation, discussion and teaching spaces were considered very important.”
The new unit will be laid out in a ‘U’ shape, with the nursing station in the centre, patient rooms on one side, and rooms for interviews, observation, teaching, and tele-psychiatry on the other side. The meeting rooms will rarely be empty as they will also be used for patient therapeutic activities such as music, yoga, relaxation, art and the kitchen/cooking program, which focuses on healthy eating and helping patients learn important skills. Windows on the west side of the unit will look out over the hospital atrium and bring natural light onto the floor. “For patients with mental health issues, the physical space itself can play an important role in treatment,” says Ms. Paquette.
Listening to families
The unit’s staff members weren’t the only people offering input on the new design. “We consulted with our patients’ families too,” says Ms. Paquette, “and they told us that having a space they could call their own would be ideal.” The result is a dedicated family room where parents can take short breaks or stay overnight if they wish. The single-patient rooms on the unit will also provide privacy for patients and their families.
The Psychiatry unit will also benefit from dedicated patient elevators, important for patients who are being admitted from Emergency, since it will provide fast, secure and private access to the unit.
Better opportunities for teaching
Teaching is an important part of child psychiatry’s mission: psychiatry residents and interns in fields as diverse as psychology, occupational therapy, recreology, and nursing do their training on the unit. There will be specific teaching rooms on the new unit for staff and for interns, as well as tele-health facilities for teaching professionals throughout the Réseau universitaire intégré de santé (RUIS) network.
The opportunity to plan and design a unit from scratch has been very exciting, says Ms. Paquette. “The transition doesn’t change much in terms of what we do, but it will change a lot in terms of how we get things done. At the Glen, we’ll have the ability to share our knowledge, apply that knowledge, and really work in partnership with the patients and their families. We can’t wait to move there.”