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We're the team from St John of God Berwick Hospital, and this is our newly designed hospital.

So we're required to build a hospital within the Australian Health Facility Guidelines.

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Lisa Norman
Chief Executive Officer
St John of God Berwick Hospital

That's a given and that's what the Health Department demand of us. But from our point of view,

we wanted to build something that really was quite different, and then in terms of safety, we had to listen to the staff.

How do they want to work in the environment? Is the environment going to function well and meet their needs?

So, once the design was put on paper, we actually had a few different prototype areas built.

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Catherine Campbell
Health and Safety Manager
St John of God Berwick Hospital

And so we were able to bring the people through that were going to work in those areas - consult with them.

Most the staff had an opportunity to be involved and I think

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Sandi Hatfield
Nurse
St John of God Berwick Hospital

everyone's feedback was really thought about and considered.

And having an opportunity to make a difference to our actual work environment was really special.

We did make modifications on those, and then as an end result we've ended up to this brand new facility.

We've been able to reduce a lot of the hazardous manual handling out of the hospital through our ceiling tracking system,

which can actually take a patient from bed to bathroom to ensuite with minimal manual handling.

We've also got a birth suite bath that is electric height adjustable, which will allow the midwives and nurses

to check on their patients without having to bend into the bath.

We've got built-in joinery, that also duplicates as sleeping arrangements for relatives, that we don't need to roll out portable bedding.

It's really important to have OH&S integrated from the ground up, rather than build something and then have to go back and try and do expensive retro-fits.

It's something I've lived and breathed for 5 years and you've got to be intent on trying to build the best possible facility you can.

And I'm really proud of what we've created. You know, it's a once-in-a-lifetime experience and I think we've done it really well.

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Safe design case study

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