Pediatric centre for Tema General Hospital.
Date
2010-07-14
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Abstract
Pediatrics is a branch of medicine that comprises the care and treatment of diseases of childhood and the study of normal growth. This specialty in medicine provides services for children from infancy to childhood (0-12) and also adolescence. This thesis, therefore, is aimed at producing a one stop health care facility that will provide these services for children. The facility has been designed not only to meet the medical needs of children but also create an environment that addresses physical, social, developmental and emotional needs of te child as he/she visits the place. As established, Pediatric needs are unique and the environment of care and healing needs to be redesigned or adapted to be effective. Moreover, it is also known that the physical environment of a treatment program affects patient outcome, but how and to what degree this is not known. Therefore, decisions about the design of the environment in areas such as; potential for growth, changes in health care delivery, cost and building-code constraints and widely varying patient characteristics and treatment models were carefully considered and resolved functionally and aesthetically.
In addition to these considerations, other equally important issues which have been identified to be lacking in most of the child health care centres visited in the country such as respect for values of children and family participation in the healing process have been successfully incorporated in the medical centre design. The design of this pediatric centre is therefore as a result of critical examination and analysis of existing child healthcare centres both within and outside the country so as to improve and promote quality child health care.
The proposed facility, which is a brain child of the government of Ghana, has been designed to provide medical services for children between the ages of 0 – 12years. Its system of operation is organized under the following; a patient care area, a patient service area and supporting facilities.In addition, the facility has been designed as part of Tema General Hospital. This is due to the deplorable state of the existing children’s unit and its inability to handle larger numbers of reported cases.
This project therefore critically understudied some existing child health care centres around the world in order toproduce a Child Health Centre design that will provide the platform to improving upon and promoting quality health care delivery to children.
Description
A thesis submitted to the Department of Architecture, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology In partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Architecture on December.