The new Birth Centre at Barnsley Hospital NHS Foundation Trust provides 7 modern, fully equipped birth rooms in a totally reconfigured unit. Our main design objective was to achieve an organised layout that supported modern midwifery practice and create a tranquil environment for staff and patients, whilst working within the constraints of the existing late 1960s structure. The existing layout suffered from many problems associated with the delivery of a modern service in a building designed over 40 years ago, with rooms being converted for uses for which they were not originally intended. The resulting layout was inefficient and difficult to navigate, and included a nurse base located within a converted room remote from the centre’s main entrance, very small birth rooms half of which with no natural light, and a remote bereavement room.
Working with the Trust we designed an efficient department that is intuitively laid out, easy to run, clear to use, and safe and secure for patients and staff with the reception / nurse base at the heart of the layout.
