LIBRA Supports Plans For A New Patient Day Room

Funds raised through our Going for Gold Campaign will help to cover the costs of refurbishing a dated patient day room at King’s College Hospital, which will be of great benefit to the inpatients staying on the Derek Mitchell Unit (DMU) and Davidson Ward.

The DMU is one of four inpatient Haematology wards and has 14 beds, all of which are side rooms. With the support of the King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, there are plans in place for the unit to be refurbished this year. Patients with malignant and non-malignant Haematological disease are cared for on this ward.

Patient side rooms are very clinical, small with little space to enable ‘personalising’ rooms to make them a little more ‘homely’. Patients will spend 24/7 in these rooms for the duration of their stay.

Carole Cobain-Patel, Head of Nursing Haematology at King’s said: “The rooms on the DMU do have windows, but with a view of brick walls, so in some it is difficult to even see the sky. Patients are able to visit the current day room – which they enjoy, but often comment on how uncomfortable and dated the environment is.

“We would like to create a modern patient day room which offers our patients a healing environment that is calming for them and enables them to look outside of floor to ceiling windows to Ruskin Park, so they can view the sky, sunlight, rain, trees, and people watch – an opportunity to view ‘normal’ life carrying on.

“We would like to create four socially distanced pods which would consist of a small sofa and two to three armchairs and a coffee table. This will enable patients from both the DMU and Davidson Ward to have much needed time away from their room and enjoy a far less clinical environment.”

The revamped patient day room will offer families time together away from the stark reminders of treatments for cancer and sickle cell disease. Having an environment which is therapeutic in design with ‘softer’ furnishings and décor, and the view of nature and the outside will have a beneficial psychological impact by providing a distraction from the reality of cancer and sickle cell treatment.

 

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