By Jane Ehrhardt
“We have more need now for critical care beds,” says Christi Napper, director of facilities development and planning at Children’s of Alabama. In response, the Quarterbacking Children’s Health Foundation, which is the charitable arm of the Monday Morning Quarterback Club, committed $3,000,000 to help relocate and expand the hospital’s pediatric intensive care unit (PICU).
“We decided to create a core area on our campus where our medical patients would be housed,” Napper says. Currently, PICU resides on the 7th floor of the Russell building. The project calls for them to move up to the 12th floor, which is currently an empty shell space that was purposely planned into the 12-year-old building to allow for future growth.
The PICU move allows for the acute care patients now housed in the McWane building to relocate into PICU’s vacated rooms. “So it’s not really an expansion, it’s a relocation and renovation within the Russell building,” Napper says.
The relocations mean all of Children’s inpatients will now reside in the same building. “This allows us to be able to have some acuity-adaptable beds,” Napper says. “Now we can do almost the exact same thing in those beds on the 7th floor that we can do up in the PICU beds. So if a patient becomes sicker, they can stay in the same room rather than being relocated across campus.”
The new PICU rooms will include sliding glass doors for better visibility by nurses, more medical gases, and an exam light to enable staff to perform more care within the room. The rooms will be equipped with mobile computers that can be wheeled around the room, replacing the current stationary computers which will free staff from being pinned to one spot.
For the same reason, a second monitor that displays stats will be added to the other side of the bed. “Now it’s only on one side of the room, and they’re having to turn around to watch the monitor, and then turn back to the patient,” Napper says. “So we are trying to make it as efficient as possible for the staff.”
Prior to the start of construction, Children’s created a mock-up room to gain input on the planned renovations from staff, patients, and families. Staff recommendations were minimal, including adjusting the placement of outlets and gases around the bed. “We moved a couple of outlets over just six inches, but that will make a huge difference once you get all the ventilators and other equipment in the room,” Napper says.
Families requested additional USB ports, more storage for all the things they bring from home, another washer and dryer in the laundry room, and a second towel rack. “Something as little as a towel rack in the bathroom is a small thing, but it means a lot to our families,” Napper says. Their suggestions also led to a reading light being added for when the room lights need to be off, but the parents wish to continue working or reading.
All of the lights will now be dimmable, as well. “There are a lot of increased sensory needs now for patients, and light can be a trigger for some,” Napper says. “It also gives them a bit of control in their room, which is important because some patients are nervous, and they want to be able to control something in their space.
“Being able to build from an empty shell has allowed us to solve another problem. Right now, adding equipment to the PICU rooms can require adding wiring and ports. So we’ve put in additional power and data in these new rooms. It’s giving them the flexibility of what they’ll need to do in the room down the road.”
With diagnostic imaging and most of the ORs already located in the Russell building, having all acute and PICU patients in the same building will be a game-changer for the staff. They will no longer have to walk from one building to another to see patients or collect them for imaging. Now it will be just an elevator ride away.
For those acute patients and their families now occupying the 45 beds in the McWane building, the advantages of the move are just as great. Besides not having to cross a walking bridge to another building to attain images, it alleviates the need to navigate the large campus during already stressful times. “Now all they will need to know is within one building,” Napper says.
Construction on the new PICU rooms has just begun and is projected to be complete by the end of the first quarter of 2026. The first patient would move into the new PICU shortly after.
