Take a look at the new adult emergency at RUH

Emergency care at the Royal University Hospital (RUH) is in for big changes this fall.

The new adult emergency room department will be located inside Jim Pattison Children’s Hospital when it is expected to open in either September or October. The Saskatchewan Health Authority (SHA) showed off its latest unit to local media on Friday. The size of the department, the privacy and the capacity for care are changing vastly from the current operations at the hospital.

The adult emergency department will have a footprint that is roughly 2.5 times larger than its current space. It boasts 26 assessment rooms that will be completely private, with adjustable lighting to relax patients. In total, there will be 42 patient care areas, one room more than the current space at RUH.

“It will improve flow tremendously, just because of the privacy,” Lisa Collard, director for emergency services in Saskatoon, said of ditching the curtains and welcoming privacy to the area.

“The colours, the sense of calm, the bright-open spaces … it will be just that much better of a place for us to care for our patients, and a much better experience for them.”

A helipad at the hospital is also welcome news for emergency patients. Rather than landing at Innovation Place and having to transfer up to four times for the short commute to a bed, helicopters can land directly on top of the building to efficiently get patients where they need to be. A staff simulation saved roughly 18 minutes of travel time compared to the current way of landing by helicopter.

“From the time that the patient is taken off of the helicopter, transported to the elevator and down into our trauma zone was two minutes,” Collard said of the simulation.

Efficiency was a theme during Friday’s tour. Turning to a technology that is roughly 220 years old, the SHA is intending to greatly improve efficiency by using a network of pneumatic tubes.

Health care professionals will no longer have their shift bogged down by running samples or sending results to a far away unit. In the fall, that step is as easy as loading a container into the tube and letting the compressed air do the rest of the work.

“We’re able to pop that lab sample in what looks like a plastic bullet, and it’s sucked up in the pneumatic tube,” Collard said. “It’s delivered within seconds to the clinical laboratory, which means that sample can be processed quicker and we’ll get our results quicker.”

The ambulance bay at the new facility will also be twice as large, expanding from two bays to four.

The Royal University Hospital Foundation contributed $5 million towards equipment and furniture for the new adult emergency department.

Moving to the new area is the mental health assessment unit, which is currently housed at RUH on a temporary basis. Thanks to an additional $1.5 million in funding announced in the provincial government’s budget, that temporary unit will become a permanent short stay unit at the new adult emergency department. Seven beds will be made available for acute mental health care needs for stays up to seven days.

Joanna Smith, area lead for emergency services in Saskatoon, said the quality of care and the patient experience will be nearly unrecognizable.

“I think it’s going to be monumentally different,” she said. “It’s private, it’s quiet, there’s less overall volume anticipated in this room. It’s the same amazing physicians and the same amazing nurses who are going to be providing care, but they’re going to have all the right equipment in the right place when they need it.”

The SHA is currently exploring options for the vacant space created when the unit moves over to the Jim Pattison Hospital in the fall.