Alberta Children's Hospital - Design

Design

The Alberta Children's Hospital was designed with substantial input from young patients, as well as families, physicians and staff of the hospital. In 2002, architects created renderings of how the hospital could look; a multi-storey brick building. These drawings were brought to the hospital's Teen Advisory Group (TAG) and changed substantially into a colourful building closely resembling toy building blocks.

The idea for the Alberta Children's Hospital was to create a building that would reduce stress and promote healing. The interior of the hospital has been designed to enable the delivery of family centred care. The hospital includes supports for families such as sleeping facilities for parents in each patient room, a babysitting service for siblings of patients, a sacred space for spiritual activities, a pet visitation room and the Healing Gardens that surround the new hospital, giving parents and their children areas to heal, to have fun and to spend private time.

The Alberta Children's Hospital is used by patients from birth to age 18 from southern Alberta, southeastern British Columbia and southwestern Saskatchewan. It is an accredited pediatric level I trauma centre by the Trauma Association of Canada. Additionally, the ACH is the provincial expert and referral centre for bone marrow transplantation, and is the leader in Western Canada (which is rapidly establishing itself as the national leader), for pediatric neurosciences. It also is the only pediatric hospital in Canada that consists of a comprehensive Behavioral Unit, is the world leader in congenital cataracts surgery, and has the largest pediatric vision clinic in all of Western Canada.

The Alberta Children's Hospital Research Institute for Child and Maternal Health (ACHRI) is the Alberta Children's Hospital's affiliated research institute, and has a team of over 150 members dedicated to research and teaching excellence in the study of human development from embryo to adulthood.