Extension and renovation of Hospital Nueva Guardia in Santa Fe

Project description by Nueva Guardia Hospital Dr. José María Cullen

The Hospital “Dr. José María Cullen” is one of the most important of its kind in the city of Santa Fe and metropolitan area, it is one of the specialized assistance centers for emergency and trauma care. It is located on a site in the city center, on Av. Freyre, between Salta street and Lisandro de la Torre street. This location gives good accessibility and connection with the territory.

The construction it originates from the need to refurbish the emergency guard sector existing in the hospital, with the premise of respecting the existing floor of the building, preserving its historical value, and in turn redefining the use of sectors and demolishing obsolete areas allow the construction of a new Guard according to current requirements.

The New Guard rises in the same sector that occupied the existing guard, developing in a greater surface that advances towards the front of Av. Freyre, where the pedestrian access is located through a dry place, counting on a differentiated entrance for the vehicular ambulance access.

The new building, distributed on the ground floor, has an approximate covered area of ​​440m², which includes the admission of a guard, waiting room, diagnostic and treatment area with 4 offices, one of which functions as a “triage” classifying the urgency. In the restricted area there is a nursing office, observation room, and a dirty operating room or procedure room, complemented by a dirty office area and pathological waste, and a patient washing room. The latter units connected through a service step with the existing shockroom.

Other support facilities such as a new public toilets, a staff office sector, administrative reporting area, and a security booth for TVCC access control and monitoring. The pedestrian access protection sector has a semi-covered area of ​​25m² that includes pedestrian entry through an access stairway and through a double-section ramp designed according to accessibility parameters.

In the central hall of the main building of the Hospital, a Report Center was developed with 10 attention boxes, configured by a metal structure to support a mezzanine and the glazed enclosure of the sector, covering an approximate covered area of ​​90m².

To guarantee the functionality of the entire hospital complex, the new Guard sector, is connected to the existing hospital through a closed circulation that links the New Guard Waiting Room with the Central Hall of the existing building where the Report Center is developed .

For vehicular entry, a sector for maneuvering and parking of indoor ambulances (semi-covered surface of 88m²) was developed, facilitating the entry of emergencies to the shockroom and procedure room.

The exterior urbanization, is given by a dry access square with a landscaped sector and a landscaped internal courtyard, which corresponds to an area of ​​180m².

The construction guidelines defined for each sector of intervention especially include measures to guarantee the safety of public service personnel, including glazed safety surfaces, safety intercoms in the intake boxes, access control with electromagnetic lock in a restricted area, detectors fire, closed circuit of internal and external TV with central camera monitoring in Security Cabin, vandal-proof equipment in public areas, special conditioning and aseptic measures in critical areas, among others.

One of the biggest challenges of the work has been to minimize discomfort to the rest of the hospital and to the shockroom of the guard, which during the execution of the construction, continued to function normally, even allowing the entry of ambulance vehicles. The intervention and functionality priorities of the building described above could be respected as a result of a great coordination work between the hospital's medical management, the construction company and the technical agency of the province.