Dr. Jeff Beselt, executive medical director for Island Health’s North Island region, says they are absolutely ready to open the hospital on Sunday.
But despite the fancy new facility, he also says it won’t change what they do.
“This changes so much, but health care is about people and the people aren’t changing,” Beselt says. “The relationships that people have and the way people work, that doesn’t change. It’s different, but it’s the same people and that’s really what it’s about. The buildings are different, and we’re really excited to work in the new buildings, but at the same time, what we do is the same as it always was and that’s just about listening to people and hearing their stories and supporting them when they’re not well to help them get better.”
Beselt worked his last shift in the old facility on Tuesday, and says “it was sort of a funny feeling going home and thinking, wow, after all that time and after all those people I’ve gotten to take care of over the years and the next time I work it will be in the new place.”
While the big move of all the inpatients at the hospital will be on Sunday – which will also be the first day of admissions at the new facility – they’ve been slowly moving over for the past week or so.
As of Sunday morning at 5:31, if you’re in need of emergency care, you’ll go to the new building, Beselt says.
“That’s when everything really starts to change. Then from about 8 a.m. until about noon, all of the inpatients will be moving from the old facility to the new facility.”
While that task may sound insurmountable, Beselt says they are absolutely ready.
“There’s tons of work going on and we’re excited and ready to go,” Beselt says. “We’ve been planning for this for a long time. We’re working very closely with a company and this is what they do. I haven’t done this before, but they have. There’s a lot of logistics involved with moving 70 or 80 patients from one facility to another but we’re excited, we’ve got a good plan and we’ll for sure be able to make adjustments on the day of the move, as well.”
“It’s very orchestrated but of course it’s also very dynamic, because some patients we already know because they’re in our facility right now, but there will also be people who have just been admitted, and we’re just getting to know them, so we will definitely have to adjust our plans in order to accomodate the care that people require.”
Beselt says the thing he is most proud of about the completion of the new facilites in both Campbell River and the Comox Valley is how many people have been in on the process to make it what it has become.
“We’ve had 38 clinical and non-clinical user groups over the past five years, there have been thousands of meetings…to help us design the best facilities for this community,” Beselt says. “There have been lots of unique thinsg that we’ve worked through and lots of compromise, but we’ve had the right people helping us figure things out. So because of that, we have two amazing facilities that we’re really proud of.”