CEO Chat

The New Hospital Starts To Feel Like Home

March 2008

Jim Shmerling, DHA, FACHE, President and CEO of The Children's Hospital

Here at The Children’s Hospital, we’re just a few months into the settling-in process at our new location. And just like anyone who moves into a new home, the transition takes time, patience and a focus on the long-term.

We’re all familiar with the challenges that come with adjusting to a new home: our routines are suddenly different. The life rhythms to which we had become so accustomed and that we played out within a familiar place are gone. The new place looks and sounds different. Feels different. Instead of the comfortable and the familiar, we find instead the unfamiliar, the unexpected.

But as the article below indicates, beautifully and sincerely written by a staff member here at Children’s, in time we begin to build new rhythms, discover the familiar within the unfamiliar and, most importantly, we begin to begin to feel at home again.

The New Children’s Hospital: Moving On; Moving Up

by Margaret Lister, The Children’s Hospital Staff Assistant III, Radiology

We all agree that there is a physical and emotional impact involved in moving.

Sure, the old place was a little run down, and we’d run out of options – it had been remodeled, expanded, tiled, painted and prettified until there was no space, time, or money to do more. But, it was “our” old place. Over the years the changes were continuous, some big, some small, but not over-whelming, and sometimes not even noticeable if you weren’t living in the construction zone. 

But totally moving is different. It’s monumental.

The reality of it was hard to grasp, as was evidenced by the questions asked over and over at move meetings – as if it was hard to accept that clutter did indeed have to go, and all those file cabinets would not be moved. And it seems to me that those of us who lived in the “old place” longest had a lot harder climb up the hill to get a new vision than the newer residents had. Or it may be that my peers just like to kvetch a little more. 

For whatever reason, a prime topic over the past few months has been anything that started with the phrase “at the old hospital,” followed by negative comments about the new a) drive, b) office and cubicle space, c) the hugeness of the place, d) parking space, e) wall colors, etc., etc.

Most of the talking was more nostalgic than mean-spirited. One long-time co-worker/friend remarked that the “old hospital” was a quirky little institution with a lot of people who just liked taking care of kids and had fun doing it. Now we are a big hospital – still with a lot of people who like taking care of kids, but the small, quirky, just one big family feel seems to be hard to recapture. 

Another friend sighed and asked if I remembered when our offices were in the houses across the alley behind the Pavilion building. During the couple of years that we were neighbors there in our little white houses we had summer lemonade parties on the front porches shaded by big trees (no air conditioning). We could park in the “back yard” of the houses and were mere steps from the door. One year a homeless kitty that we had adopted came back to us with her litter of six kittens. They made the TCH News and all found homes.

For all the talk and all the remembrances, just like leaving a house where your child took his first steps, eventually you look around the new place without the blinders of past history impacting your view, and you start to appreciate the space your child now has to run around in. 

You probably have made peace with your new route to work, have your parking area (finally) and your badge works to get you into all the places you need to be. Bit by bit, you find out where your old friends are located, and even maneuver the mazes to find their cubbies.

Life is good and getting better.

You can take a deep breath and listen and see what others are saying.

This was brought home to me a couple of weeks ago when I escorted a parent to second floor of the Administrative Pavilion. When she said she was here with her son four weeks out of five for chemotherapy, as they had been at the old place, I asked her opinion about the new hospital.

She was honest in saying that for the first two or three weeks they were here she was unsure. Now, she said, they love it. She couldn’t say enough good things about the facility, the patient rooms, the beautiful atrium, the ease of getting around the hospital, the campus, the colors, the cafeteria, the warm friendliness they encounter everywhere and how easy it was to drive to the hospital. They loved and enjoyed some of the very things that some of us had negative feelings about (minus the cubicles). 

One evening, I mentioned this encounter in passing to Dr. Hay. He told his own story of how he asks every family he serves about their opinion of The new Children’s Hospital. The response, he reported, is overwhelmingly positive. Same as the mom I spoke to – the parents like the accessibility of the hospital, the open feeling of the building. They feel a bright and welcoming air throughout the hospital that is appreciated, and they feel their child is getting state-of-the art care.

It all makes you think.

Change, especially change of this magnitude, is hard. But hearing and understanding how our patients, families and staff are enjoying our new medical home has helped me climb up the “move” mountain. Because of their comments, I appreciate a much broader view of The Children’s Hospital and what we have to offer our patients and ourselves.  

The good old days were great. They were the foundation that took us step by step to where we are now. It’s been quite the hike. And now that we’ve arrived, I love the view.

With warm regards,