Throughout the end of March and beginning of April 2013 I have been involved with different activities for the PFCC at UCH. The first of which being involved with OR training involving the PFCC. I have been able to give some feedback to nurses and other health professionals who work in the OR and I have been able to relate my own OR experiences and giving them feedback on what is and what is not helpful all from the perspective of a patient and what they can do to improve the patient experience. Going through surgery can be a different experience each time, but when you have health professionals that can ease your fears and make you as comfortable as possible it is a great help.
In addition, the hospital is also going through a major transition adding on an additional inpatient tower. Some really amazing things are happening at UCH with the addition of the new tower. They’ve installed new equipment, patient rooms and I’m just so impressed with the improvements that this is going to provide to patients. With that being said, they have had volunteers giving safety tours to the hospital staff on all the various floors so they are aware of where everything is and so I have been involved with that as well. I have mostly been giving tours of the surgical floor and the Neuro ICU. The new patient waiting room for surgery is such an improvement over the old one, with much more privacy and they now have consultation rooms where surgeons can discuss cases with the families in a more private setting.