by Thomas Hobson
Child Life Director

In a follow up from yesterday’s post, I have completed my Le Bonheur Children’s Ambassador Training.  It was a little touch and go as to whether I would make the cut, but I did.  (Okay, there were no cuts, I just thought it would be more dramatic.)  There was even a graduation ceremony, with a lot of pomp for the circumstance.

When I wrote yesterday’s post, I referred to the ambassador role as a tour guide.  That is, in part, true, but I learned quickly that it is more than that.  The ambassador is an important role for telling the story of Le Bonheur Children’s.  We educate on the hospital’s vision for the future, and Le Bonheur Children’s role in the community, nation, and world.  We are here to share the amazing and touching stories of the hospital, both historically and during the building process.

If you don’t know this already, let me be the first to tell you that there is no shortage of those stories.  Also, to put in perspective the size of the hospital, we were trained to provide a two-hour tour, and we are not even covering half of the hospital!

As I promised, here are a few interesting facts about the new Le Bonheur Children’s:

• The new hospital is 610,000 square-feet in size.
• The complete Le Bonheur campus is will be 50 percent larger and will cover more than one million square-feet.
• In the same way the current hospital is designed, all patient rooms are private, and now will accommodate comfortable sleeping space for two parents.
• Playrooms and space for families to gather on every inpatient floor.
• The new hospital includes a movie theater.
• Lactation rooms for moms are available on each floor.
• The Emergency Department will more than double in size, with 64 patient treatment rooms in the new area.
• Almost half of the beds in the new Le Bonheur Children’s are for critical care patients – these beds are in the dedicated pediatric intensive care, cardiovascular intensive care and neonatal intensive care units.

Over the next few weeks, I will share more specifics about the new Le Bonheur Children’s and the exciting aspects of it.  Also, what kind of a blogger would I be if I didn’t take a few pictures?