Kettering General Hospital recently opened its new £30m Foundation Wing, designed to bring together several specialities that had previously been housed in smaller, out-of-date accommodation scattered over the hospital site.
The new until brings together linked departments and clinical expertise, and will significantly improve the care offered to children, patients with heart problems, and those needing intensive care.
It was built to the highest specifications in close co-operation with clinical staff, and has facilitated an opportunity to re-organise the way the entire hospital works.
Particularly impressive is the Foundation Wing’s 16-bed intensive care unit, which is a major boost to the hospital’s facilities for coping with critically-ill patients, and will enable it to better handle the growing demand for this kind of care.
Each bed in the state-of-the-art department has a flexible ceiling-mounted Starkstrom pendant solution. As part of the turnkey package, Starkstrom also supplied the Isolated Power Supplies (IPS) and Uninterruptible Power Supplies (UPS).
Starkstrom Starkstrom Starkstrom was chosen for the project after representatives from the trust, both clinical and commercial, visited other examples of the company’s critical care pendant installations and were impressed by the quality of products and installation. The fact the company could provide a turnkey package was vital in the decision-making process, the key benefit being the integration and compatibility of these services from a single supplier. This confidence proved well founded when a flood halfway through the build meant that the pendants had to be rebuilt and recommissioned.
Dr Phil Watt, clinical lead for KGH’s intensive care unit and a consultant anaesthetist with a special interest in intensive care, said: “Kettering General Hospital was the first district general hospital in England to have an intensive care unit in December 1962, so we are celebrating our 50th birthday. Back in the 1960s, our predecessors were at the cutting edge of care by developing the unit. Now, 50 years later, we are back there, with one of the most modern, spacious and patient-centred intensive care units in the region.”