How virtual reality is shaping the new tower of Clements University Hospital
If you had just stumbled into a particular fourth-floor room in William P. Clements Jr. University Hospital on a recent summer day, you would’ve been understandably confused at the scene unfolding before you: medical personnel dressed in blue scrubs, wearing virtual reality goggles, their hands waving joysticks into the empty air.
These UT Southwestern physicians and nurses weren’t swept up in some newfangled video game. They were taking a virtual reality tour of their new workspace – which is still under construction. Welcome to building planning in the 21st century.
As construction ramps up for the third tower of Clements University Hospital, UT Southwestern teams are getting together with design firm CallisonRTKL to plan the final details – and virtual reality is playing a big role. Physicians, nurses, and Facilities Management employees have been meeting regularly for several months to discuss the best ways to design rooms for optimal patient care, and virtual reality has brought a new dimension to their planning.
Stanley Parnell, Senior Associate Vice President with CallisonRTKL, specializes in planning medical spaces. He and other representatives from CallisonRTKL led a recent session where physicians and nurses experienced the new hybrid operating suites in virtual reality. Firms like CallisonRTKL are using virtual reality more often to help clients visualize the spaces they are building.
“Up to this point, we’ve used two-dimensional drawings to progress the design,” Mr. Parnell said. “Having been involved in the planning for well over a year and then doing the VR, you almost forget where you really are and you think you’re in the space that’s about to be built instead – it’s that real. So it really helps inform the clinicians down to the realistic dimensional detail on everything that will become a part of that environment in the future.”
The 30-month Clements University Hospital construction project that began earlier this year will add a tower to house employees, patients, and services for neuroscience programs associated with the Peter O’Donnell Jr. Brain Institute. Participants in recent virtual reality feedback sessions included Dr. Babu Welch, Professor of Neurological Surgery and Radiology; Dr. David McDonagh, Professor of Anesthesiology and Pain Management, Neurological Surgery, and Neurology and Neurotherapeutics; Jennifer Linder, Assistant Nursing Manager; and Archana Cronjaeger, Assistant Vice President for Hospital Facilities, among others.
“The construction of the Clements University Hospital third tower will bring together the Clements and Zale Lipshy University Hospital programs,” said Dr. John Warner, Executive Vice President for Health System Affairs. “And in that same spirit of collaboration, we’re excited to work with several partners both internally and externally to make this tower the best it can be, the day it opens. The use of this virtual reality tool is just one way we’ll go to exceptional lengths to bring the best care to our patients.”
Participants simply walked in a set area, donned special goggles, and used a handheld device to transport themselves further into the virtual space (when the actual space wouldn’t allow it).
Drs. Welch and McDonagh are the Chairs of the committee designing the new operating rooms planned for the second and third floors of the new hospital tower. Their teams will see operating platforms that are double their current size at Zale Lipshy University Hospital. The third tower will house 19 ORs, one hybrid operating room (meaning the room has advanced imaging tools for minimally invasive surgeries), and two angiography suites – a marked expansion from the current platform at Zale Lipshy.
“In the process of planning these new suites, we obviously want to avoid oversights that might negatively impact peoples’ jobs for the next several years,” Dr. McDonagh said. “When you’re planning off a two-dimensional blueprint or just looking at a computer screen, you’re always left with this lingering feeling of whether you’re interpreting it correctly. With virtual reality, everyone in roles from nursing to surgery and facilities can step right in to make sure it works from their individual standpoints.”
The session allowed clinicians to make suggestions for equipment placement, such as where the surgical booms would be located in the ceiling. The session also built a lot of excitement for the new facility.
“Zale Lipshy is about 30 years old. It opened in 1989 and the operating rooms are just much smaller than what is currently designed in the new hospital today, and they’re all different sizes and different configurations so we’re really looking forward to having a standardized and much bigger OR,” Dr. McDonagh said.
In addition to the obvious efficiency and safety benefits of virtual reality, it’s also really cool.
“This is the first time I’ve used virtual reality, and I think it’s invaluable,” Dr. Welch said. “It’s very useful. We want to be able to go into the actual space and say, ‘Oh, I’ve been here before.’ I think it brings the team together too.”
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Dr. Welch holds the Duke Samson Chair of Neurological Surgery.
Dr. Warner holds the Jim and Norma Smith Distinguished Chair for Interventional Cardiology, and the Nancy and Jeremy Halbreich, Susan and Theodore Strauss Professorship in Cardiology.