New Hospital Entrance Room Has Double Use

Press, Volume XCIII, Issue 27859, 6 January 1956, Page 12

New Hospital Entrance Room Has Double Use

A visitors’ waiting-room to serve also as a day room for patients has been completed as the first stage in an internal reorganisation programme at the Christchurch Public Hospital. The loom, as up to date as any hotel lounge, has been used by patients since Christmas Day, but will not be open for visitors for at least two months.

After the sealing of a short driveway and yard on the Oxford terrace side of the hospital, this will become the new main entrance, conforming to the American idea that a hospital’s entrance is its “shop front’’—containing bright colours yet a restful atmosphere.

The North Canterbury Hospital Board’s architects designed the new entrance waiting-room. Four swing doors open to a light and airy room with panelling, modern furniture, and bright curtains. The flooring is of green, mottled rubber in a check pattern. Built locally, the chairs, contemporary in design, are of light wood with plastic-covered foam-rubber seats The covers can be removed for cleaning or if they are damaged. Eighteen chairs, five shining wood tables with ash trays, and three highstanding flower boxes are arranged in such a way that they take up a minimum space when the room is crowded with visitors. High flowers in pots ir the 6ft long boxes will give added colour.

Other items include a radio, which will be bracketed to a wall, two enclosed electric fan units, a public telephone, which it is hoped later to convert to multi-coin so that toll calls can be made, toilets opening off the loom, and a notice board which will display rules for visitors to the hospi ta k An inform ation desk at the end of the room will have a porter on wuty at visiting periods to advise the numbers of patients’ wards. The curtains are the outstanding feature of the waiting-room. A complete break from what have been regarded as traditional hospital colours, they in-

elude bright reds, oranges, and yellows.

Attached to the larger entrance room is a smaller room to serve as a children’s creche. Yet to be furnished by a Christchurch firm as a gift, it has a cupboard for toys, and one wall will be covered with a mural depicting characters from nursery rhymes. The advantage of the building, built on to the corridor which connects the Chalmers Ward with the rest of the hospital, is that it will eliminate congestion in the main courtyard on visiting days. Available as a day room for patients in adjoining wards— 1,2, and 3, and »4 and 15—the new building has already proved popular among those who can make use of it. Several used the telephone there Io give greetings to their families on Christmas morning. Costing £BOOO, the building also has an underground basement fitted as a bicycle shed for nurses and storage space for coal and wood for some of the smaller domestic fires in the hospital.

Tar-sealing of the entrance drive necessary because of the dust nuisance in summer, will probably not be completed for more than two months. After that the corrugated iron fence along the footpath will be removed, the iron spiked fence in front of the old nurses’ home extended in its place, and more imposing entrance gates built. The second stage of internal reorganisation at the hospital is also in progress at present with the building of ?u W £or tbe board adjoining tne, old home of the medical superintendent by the Antigua street bridge, the home, which was the superintendent s residence until about three years ago. is being extended, and will include a new board room. Reallocation of space available from the shutmg of visitors’ facilities and the board s offices will be the third stage, enabling a reorganisation of medical and nursing administration offices and the casualty department, it is hoped that the board will be able tn move to its new building before the end of the year.