With a focus on meeting the needs of patients and staff, the 25,000 SF, 30-bed inpatient unit is a fit-out of a previously-shelled floor within the Cooper Pavilion building.  Flexibly designed to adapt to Critical Care Level patients, its immediate use is as a Medical/Surgical Cancer Patient Unit, with accommodations for protective environment and airborne infection isolation rooms for bone marrow transplant and immunocompromised patients.

To meet the unique needs of the patients and interdisciplinary staff, the unit employs a decentralized caregiver model, with decentralized supplies and team rooms for collaborative staff interactions. The unit is easily organized with a logical flow.

Staff spaces are critical to the clinical team, and are configured to allow individual heads-down work while providing separate team huddle and collaboration areas for interdisciplinary teams.  In addition to various clinical personnel, the hospital has a large residency program requiring space for residents to meet in groups. Team rooms within the unit provide privacy and access to patient electronic medical records, as well as digital connection to MD Anderson for tumor board reviews. Incorporating open space to accommodate both medical teams and visitors was imperative to the planning process.

The new, all-private inpatient rooms offer a clean, contemporary, calming and spacious feeling to the patients, staff and families. The graphics add touches of serene beauty and provide a “healing element” to the space. The flowers illustrated on the graphics are all native to New Jersey. The soft, almost watercolor like daffodil wall coverings in the patient rooms has layered depth to allow space for healing while the corridors are lined with more saturated images to invigorate and energize patients and caregivers.