Wotton Lawn Mental Health Hospital, Gloucester – Refurb
- Client
- Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
- Location
- Gloucester
- Project Leaders
- Robert Walder Catherine Ashworth
- Value
- 5M
Challenge
Wotton Lawn Hospital is an acute mental health hospital situated near the centre of Gloucester and provides inpatient services for the county of Gloucestershire.
The hospital has four admission wards, a nurse-led psychiatric intensive care unit (PICU) and a low secure unit (LSU). Service users are supported by a variety of healthcare workers including nurses, doctors and allied health professionals such as psychologists, art therapists, physiotherapists, occupational therapists and sports exercise therapists.
Quattro has been involved in the highly successful phased programme of safety, privacy and dignity improvements at Wotton Lawn since 1999. Most recently our Hospital Architects have designed the refurbishment of the four admission wards to improve safety, privacy and dignity with the installation of en-suites and the provision of a family room. The four L shaped wards are over two floors containing over 60 bedrooms. Each wing contains a central shared accommodation area with bedroom wings either side. This shared accommodation had become disjointed following several previous adaptations.
The design needed to be robust, ligature free whist maintaining a homely feel as much as possible in a secure environment.
The wards needed to remain in operation during the building work. Quattro’s talented Healthcare Architects have extensive experience in the health, safety, phasing and technical issues involved in phased programmes and worked closely with staff and managers to enable the smooth running of changes within a secure environment.
- Partners
-
Adams Fletcher
Gallery
Solution
In order to provide the space for the ensuites, bedrooms where redistributed across the four wards and ancillary accommodation rearranged in order to maintain the number of bedrooms required. The refurbishment included the relocation of patient seating areas/ lounges placing them at the centre of each ward, opened out to the corridors. These have been highly successful spaces popular with patients and staff, improving communication, and patient wellbeing.
The design of all fixtures and fittings were carefully specified to be robust and remove ligature risk. Ensuite doors where specially designed to remove the ligature risk at the top of the door whilst also maintaining privacy for the patient. Patients and staff where closely involved throughout the design process, through design discussions and ultimately choosing the colours for the fixtures and fittings.
Our Mental Healthcare Design Team recognise the importance of noise control, access to natural lighting and maintaining high levels of visibility.
These were given careful consideration within the design scheme to provide a quiet, calm and natural environment, including the specification of suitable surface finishes to minimise noise particularly in the bedroom wings. Internal windows were specified to improve visibility between social areas.
The mechanical and electrical systems were closely integrated within the spatial design. Access control was added throughout the wards and carefully coordinated with the doors and anti-ligature ironmongery, ensuring the installation met the health and safety requirements of the Unit.
The construction works were carried out to each phase sequentially. The works within each ward were phased to enable the wards to remain in operation with only 2 bedrooms out of use at any one time. This required detailed phasing drawings to be prepared to ensure that each ward had all the facilities it needed during each phase of construction. Our detailed phasing also ensured contractors were separated from staff, patient and visitors at all times.