Spoken by Dr Ainslie Senz—Emergency Physician and Director, Footscray Emergency Department, Western Health

Now you find yourself in the Emergency Department. As you can see with the big red sign, the arrivals area is where you go to first. At this point, you’ll see a triage nurse who will talk to you about your concerns. After that, you’ll see one of the clerical staff who will make sure we have the right details for you.

Whilst you’re waiting, we have a beautiful Emergency Department that’s really been designed to consider the patient experience when you’re really having a bad day. There are triage assessment rooms that come off the waiting room, which allow us to commence investigations or tests and also treatments whilst you’re waiting for a cubicle. And then, when a cubicle becomes available, you’ll head through those big doors with ‘EMERGENCY over the top where all of your care continues.

Some of the other features of this area include that we have a parent room, we also have a play area for children, and we have access to our mental health and Alcohol and Other Drugs Hub. This is an area where people can be cared for, for their mental health and well-being concerns, or for issues with drug use and addiction. The area has a lounge room, a courtyard, a sensory room, and also cubicles so that patients can choose to either be alone in their own cubicle or out and interacting with the other patients and staff. We are really hoping that this promotes the wellbeing of these passion cohort and provides a safe and therapeutic space for them.

One of the features of this Emergency Department is that we have our own Satellite Imaging Hub. This means we have ready access to two x-rays, ultrasound and CT all within the footprint of the Emergency Department. This means we’re efficient, and it reduces delays for patients to get their tests. Other features of this Emergency Department include bariatric cubicles. These cubicles are a little bit larger, with bariatric beds and ceiling hoists in the ceiling, so that we can help the patients move around.

There are many things within this Emergency Department that are designed specifically to promote efficiency. When we are working efficiently, it means that all the patients receive timely care.

The design of this Emergency Department has been informed by staff right from the beginning. Staff were involved in describing how an Emergency Department works, and through all of the design phases with the architects, the builders, and the interior designers. The Emergency Department that you can see has been formed by the staff who work in it, with their knowledge and experience about how to deliver best care.

We’ve tried really hard with the design of this waiting room to balance the patient experience with patient safety. It doesn’t look like any other waiting room in any other Emergency Department that I’ve seen before. We have really tried to balance the patient experience and make them feel comfortable while they’re having their worst day. We’ve also tried to ensure that the staff can see the patients at any point in this waiting room and keep an eye on them from a clinical safety point of view.

On the other side of those doors is the larger Emergency Department. When I say larger, this Emergency Department is significantly bigger than the current Emergency Department. It has multifunctional zones that mean that each individual area of the department can function as one unit which means you can lock it down if you needed to, say, we had another pandemic. It also means that staff do not have to move very far to do their jobs, and that patients can know that they’re being attended to by the staff in those areas. Each area has the ability to have single rooms, rooms with ensuite, even bariatric care, and some of the areas have negative pressure rooms for contagious disease.

One of the design principles of this entire Emergency Department is that there’s no special places for special things, and so that every area of the Emergency Department can be used for various different functions. This is really important in the future. Because right now we actually don’t know what the future holds and so it’s really important for the department to be able to adapt to any future concerns, changes in patient types, changes in demographics, and changes in needs of the community.

When our team comes to this Emergency Department, their first reaction is usually wide-open eyes and a ‘wow’. They are excited about the space itself, but also the facilities. I think most of all they’re excited to work in a place that allows them to deliver the care that they want to provide to the patients, and for the community to see this too. It’s certainly the Emergency Department that the community deserve and, really truly, it’s ‘the People’s Hospital.