By Tate Papworth
A vitally important piece of infrastructure has taken shape on Brimbank’s skyline.
Construction of the Joan Kirner Women’s and Children’s Hospital is running to schedule and the building will be handed over to Western Health on March 30 next year.
The $200 million building will include a total of 237 beds in new and refurbished accommodation, 20 maternity delivery rooms, 39 special care nursery cots, four theatres and additional clinics.
Western Health divisional director women’s and children’s services, Adele Mollo, said the new facility has a number of exciting features.
“We’re creating a family-centred environment and an environment for women, children and babies that facilitates best care,” she said.
“The most exciting part about that is for the first time in a really long time across the state, we’ll see a brand new neonatal intensive care unit.
“So we’ll be increasing two neonatal intensive care beds and adding additional special care nursery beds. That enables women and their babies to be kept together.”
Sunshine Hospital maternity staff members have been pushed to their limits in recent months, with the hospital delivering a record number of babies.
Ms Mollo said the new facility will vastly expand the hospital’s capabilities.
“This gives us the ability to birth up to 7020 babies a year,” she said.
“This year we birthed nearly 5,800 and we had a couple of record months where we had 500 babies born. That’s enormous for us.
“Our current infrastructure is constrained to be able to deliver that, but this new building will enable us to go above 7000 births.”
Ms Mollo said the new facility will also be a massive boost for employment. “We’re looking at an enormous amount of recruitment over the next six months,” she said. “Not only from a medical, midwifery and nursing point of view, but also from a support services perspective.
“When you open a new building, you need more cleaners, security, administration, all the back of house and staff for theatre and pharmacy. “It’s creating an enormous amount of jobs in the west – it’s a really exciting time for the west from a workforce point of view and a patient care point of view.”
In recent weeks focus on site has shifted to fit-out activities with sub-contractors on site into the late evening and weekends. In July, the project reached a milestone of two million man hours. Western Health senior operations project manager Sue Valentine said the building has been designed to provide convenient flow between it and the main hospital campus.
“The main thing about the design of the building is that it’s still part of the main Sunshine Hospital campus,” Ms Valentine said.
“We will work as one hospital. The design of the interior is done in such a way that the patients, physicians and families can comfortably move through the building and staff can flow between the main campus and Joan Kirner.”
Minister for Health Jill Hennessy said it was exciting to see the building taking shape.
“After celebrating the building’s topping out earlier this year, we can now see the façade and interior of this world class hospital quickly taking shape,” Ms Hennessy said. “When it opens next year, women and children in the west will no longer need to travel far from home to get the best possible care in the very best facilities.
“Joan Kirner fought passionately to improve healthcare for the women and children of the West – and she would be so proud that her legacy will live on forever in this new hospital.”
