The Wilhelmina Children's Hospital (WKZ) in Utrecht (part of the UMCUtrecht) offers family-oriented care to children and their parents. For a variety of reasons, the WKZ felt the need to renovate the hospital's hot floor. This renovation gave the hospital the opportunity to further elaborate the family-oriented care in their services, facilities and building. The WKZ asked Panton to define, together with employees of the three departments on the hot floor (OK centre, Intensive Care and Birth Centre), opportunities to strengthen family-oriented care.
Vision of family-oriented care
The units OR Centre, Intensive Care and Birth Centre are characterised by the intensive care they provide to patients 24/7. Patients and families experience major events on these units; the arrival of a child, an emergency c-section or the admission of a child in a critical condition.
Family-oriented care must therefore also be provided day and night, 24/7, taking into account the family's diverse needs during these drastic situations.
This care is inseparable from the support services. These services must meet the needs of the wards in order to provide family-oriented care 24/7.
Concepts of connecting processes
Panton mapped out the processes that take place in the three departments in a service design project with employees from the departments.
For each process, we investigated how it can be better organized by working together better and by aligning better with the vision of 24/7 family-oriented intensive care.
In a series of co-creation sessions, concepts were developed whereby the three departments shared facilities, whereby tasks were taken over by employees working elsewhere, and by employing technology.
We tested the concepts in a larger group of employees. This allowed people to indicate at an early stage in how the concept would work well for them and in how it would help them to provide better care. By sitting down with employees from the three departments to discuss a particular topic, it became clear how small the differences are between the departments. In this way, our service design approach positively contributed to the quality of the solutions, to the connection between employees and to the perception of the renovation.
The added value of our service design approach
Because of Panton's approach, the Wilhelmina Children's Hospital now has clear starting points for the renovation; as well as for the services in the three departments; and the supporting processes.
In addition, a positive attitude towards the upcoming changes has emerged, as many employees from the WKZ have been involved in the co-creation process in a positive way.
