Wandsworth Healthcare chosen as supplier for UK’s First Modular Barn Theatre
The latest addition to Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust, the UK’s first modular barn surgical theatre opens in the new Kent and Medway Orthopaedic Centre at Maidstone Hospital. This state-of-the-art facility provides care for people from across the area and expand the capacity of Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust for scheduled surgical procedures.
The new Kent and Medway Orthopaedic Centre has been specially designed to provide orthopaedic patients with expert tailored care, enabling an increase in surgeries while simultaneously reducing patient waiting times and hospital stays. The Centre is a part of the broader national initiative to establish more than 50 new surgical hubs throughout England, with the aim to shorten waiting lists over the next three years.
The Centre consists of three new barn theatres and 24 dedicated surgical beds for patients having planned orthopaedic surgery, alongside an X-ray facility, office space, and a recovery area.
The complex has been situated on a dedicated site separate from the emergency department and main hospital building to allow the Centre to concentrate on delivering specifically tailored care for orthopaedic patients, enabling an increased number of surgeries and shorter patient stays.
Wandsworth Healthcare has been entrusted by Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust to implement tailored, fully IP nurse call systems throughout the Centre due to our capability to provide bespoke medical equipment, our innovative, future-proofed IPiN Nurse Call system and our end-to-end support services.
What is a barn theatre?
A new, innovative approach to tackling current capacity problems, the term ‘barn theatre’ refers to an operating room in an open-plan surgical area, where each patient is treated in a dedicated space with a specialised ultra-clean air canopy above each station. To prevent the spread of infection and reduce the risk of cross contamination, the canopy creates a positive pressure around each operating table, acting as a barrier between each area of the theatre.
Whilst the new Kent and Medway Orthopaedic Centre is the first modular barn theatre in the UK, barn theatres have received international recognition for their capacity to increase the effectiveness of medical treatments, with the reported benefits including lower infection rates, improved safety and enhanced team efficiency. In nearly all cases, barn theatres have been intended for orthopaedic use, where they are thought to be most effective due to the broadly repetitive processes involved, making it the ideal choice for Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust’s new Centre.
Bespoke Solutions for a Unique Project
Wandsworth Healthcare was chosen to provide medical equipment and our IPiN nurse call system throughout the Centre. Bespoke medical trunking was designed and manufactured by our in-house team to meet the Trust’s specifications. To allow for a seamless end-to-end service, Wandsworth Healthcare worked closely with our approved installer Professional Cabling Solutions to provide all of the Medical Service Columns pre-wired and pre-piped, offering a simplified, time saving solution for the installation on site.
Our HTML compliant, fully IP nurse call system, IPiN, was also chosen for the new Centre, incorporating Patient nurse call as well as Emergency and Cardiac.
LED indicators connected to the IPiN system have also been strategically placed throughout, enabling staff to identify calls and alarms quickly and easily and provide more efficient care.
To make the emergency alarms easily identifiable in the space, the Trust opted to add red vertical stripes from the floor and/or ceiling throughout the Centre in line with the red emergency alarm buttons on the medical service columns and trunking thorughout the centre, and matching the colour codes of our IPiN system.
Panic alarms were also installed throughout the Centre as part of the IPiN nurse call system, our team worked closely with Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust to integrate the IPiN system panic alarms with the Trust’s internal security.
In addition to this, Wandsworth Healthcare also worked with third party providers in order to install our blue medical sockets on the pendants within the barn theatre space, as well as integrating our IPiN nurse call system, including alerts and alarms, with the surgeons’ pendants to ensure that the nurse call system is accessible in every part of the Centre.
Integrated AGSS Ventilation
Following COVID-19, there has been a focus on ventilation in hospitals and healthcare settings throughout the NHS in order to reduce the risk of airborne transmissions. Through the use of HEPA filtration, the wards and theatre spaces in the new Centre will be improved to reduce the danger of cross contamination and maintain air quality throughout the entire facility.
However, Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust were also aware of the need for ventilation in clinical settings in order to minimise the potential health risks that prolonged exposure to medical gases, such as anaesthetic gases, can pose to both staff and patients. It is recognised that prolonged exposure to waste anaesthetic gases can pose health risks, including potential respiratory issues, chronic headaches, fatigue, and even reproductive effects. As a result, the Trust chose to implement an Anaesthetic Gas Scavenging System (AGSS) throughout the new Centre.
Following the specification for the new centre, our in-house team developed bespoke designs for Medical Service Columns in the multi-bed wards. As all beds in the multi-bed ward are equipped with a dedicated medical gas supply, our team designed and manufactured bespoke Medical Service Columns with integrated vents which connect to the Centre’s AGSS, supporting the Trust’s aims in minimising the amount of waste anaesthetic gases in the Centre.