The Nova Scotia government is spending $102 million on the construction of a larger pediatric emergency department at the IWK Health Centre in Halifax.

The expansion will better enable the IWK to provide emergency care, make it possible to accommodate a greater number of complex cases and facilitate criteria for new infection protection and control measures. The project is expected to be completed in 2025.

The new emergency room will include three triage rooms, 24 examination rooms, two trauma/resuscitation rooms, four mental health and addictions care rooms, a mental health day room, a CT scanner in close proximity and a double ambulance bay.

Rebecca de Champlain is the clinical lead for IWK's emergency department redevelopment. Photo contributed.

Over the last few years, there has been a significant increase in patient visits, with the department seeing a 28 per cent increase in patient volume this fall compared to the same period in 2019.

Rebecca de Champlain, clinical lead for emergency department redevelopment, said the hospital has been working on the design of the department since 2019.

"I think the public is well aware that there are issues in emergency departments with wait times.  We do hope that a new emergency department will help improve those wait times. It isn't the only piece of the problem, though. And so I think that's important to talk about what we are doing also in the meantime, both to address waiting issues right now and to prepare ourselves for, for working in the new department in the future," said De Champlain.

Annually, the IWK currently sees around 30,000 patients. With the new department, the hospital might see up to 45,000 patients a year.

De Champlain added that the department is working actively on operational redesigns to prepare for the new department and as well as to improve wait times in IWK's current department.

"We're always going to have spikes and unpredictable surges of patients. And so we're really looking at how we'll be able to better manage those events that will occur in the future as well," she said.

De Champlain said the hospital is working on how to use the space efficiently, pulling in extra resources when needed, and how to accommodate patient surges, and be more efficient.

Since a pediatric emergency department works with children with infectious illnesses, the hospital is adding new infection protection and control measures.

"Fevers and coughs, viruses, rashes, and things like that is a good percentage of the population that we see. COVID-19 has also brought up the pandemic aspect of taking care of a population when a new disease emerges," she added.

The IWK is building four airborne infection isolation rooms in the new department, and one of them will also include a resuscitation room. The rooms will be used to facilitate patients with COVID-19, measles, tuberculosis or other diseases. The new rooms will be regularly decontaminated and fully cleaned so infectious particles and droplets don't harm other patients.

"We'll have the ability to care for, for those types of patients, while keeping staff safer, it keeps the other patients and families that are also using the department safer when we're able to care for patients in those types of spaces."

IWK has been working closely with infection control practitioners on the project to ensure a safe hospital environment. They are working on increasing their efficiency by bringing in new equipment and introducing new protocols.

The construction of IWK Health’s new pediatric emergency department began earlier this month.

"It's been a real interesting project to be involved with, and to be able to gather all this feedback from staff and families and patients that use the department. We would love to invite people to come and share their thoughts and our hopes on how they would like to see the new department look like and what kind of aspects are important to them," added De Champlain.

Although the phases of the new department's design have been completed, IWK said they are always looking for community involvement regarding what they think is important and should be present in the new department.

Listen to the full interview below: