By Fallan Patterson
Staff Writer

The Nemours Children’s Hospital being built in Lake Nona is offering a glimpse into the details of the examination, emergency and long-term care hospital rooms patients and visitors will experience when the facility opens next year.

While the hospital is now still mostly a building shell – with its grounds covered in construction workers, building materials and vehicles – interested parents of potential patients and residents looking for jobs can visit the Nemours Children’s Hospital Preview Center at 9145 Narcoossee Road, Suite A102, Orlando.

The Preview Center boasts four examination rooms filled with the latest technology and a lobby featuring furniture that will fill the actual hospital. Visitors can take a guided tour where they can view, sit on and test features chosen by both executives and parents.

“They’re the ones who are going to have to use the hospital,” Jarrod Cady, Nemours spokesperson, said of the parents. The center also will serve to train the 800 hospital employees, from pediatric nurses to cafeteria cooks, who will be hired next year.

“Before anyone steps foot into the hospital, they’ll get training here,” Cady said.

Hiring capable employees is just one step of Nemours’ mission for the children’s hospital; executives hope to build a facility that not only accommodates the sick little girl or boy but his or her parents, siblings and other relatives.

To accomplish that, executives visited various children’s hospitals across the nation and asked parents of chronically-ill children what features would aid their extended stays in the hospital or visits to the pediatrician or specialist. Nemours wants to provide “family-centered care,” Cady said.

The collaboration has produced brightly colored, two-sided couches in the lobby, pivoting monitors and desks for easy patient access and rooms large enough to accommodate wheelchairs, strollers and additional family members. Extended stay rooms also will be fully stocked for easy accessibility and are fitted with personal refrigerators, safes and luggage space because “parents essentially live here,” Cady said. “When they come visit us, it’s a stressful time.”

Patients will be able to “decorate” their hospital room, using a control panel to change the lights in the room from red to blue or green or purple.

“The child can paint their room other colors for some sense of control,” Cady said.

Hospital administrators also are considering installing webcams for patients to video-phone with relatives out-of-state or even speak with a neighboring patient in addition to “ positive distractions,” such as video games and family-friendly games.

Personal emergency rooms and several gardens, including five sensory gardens and two rooftop gardens, round out the experience.

“Interacting with nature and animals aids in the healing process,” Cady said. “Not many children’s hospitals get built from scratch. We’ve been given carte blanche to do what we needed to do.”

The technology featured at the Preview Center also allows doctors, nurses and potential patients’ parents to test the equipment to help determine whether changes are needed before the hospital officially opens.

The 630,000-square-foot children’s hospital is located in what has been dubbed “Medical City,” alongside the Orlando Veterans Affairs Medical Center, the M.D. Anderson Cancer Research Institute, the Burnham Institute for Medical Research, University of Central Florida College of Medicine and Burnett School of Biomedical Sciences.

The $380 million children’s hospital will open with 95 beds, with the potential capacity for up to 139 beds, a children’s clinic and an emergency department.

As for employment opportunities, several computers are available in the Preview Center for prospective applicants to upload résumés and fill out the application.

“It’s quite the popular place these days,” Cady said of the employment portion of the facility.

Appointments for tours of the center are required. The center is open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. For more information, all 407-567-4000.