The Queensland Children's Hospital is a public children's hospital in Stanley Street, South Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. Opened on 29 November 2014, it is the single specialist paediatric hospital for Queensland, caring for the sickest and most critically injured children from across the state. As well as emergency, critical care and general paediatric services, the hospital has paediatric speciality services. The hospital combined the former Royal Children's Hospital at Herston and the Mater Children's Hospital at South Brisbane together into one new facility at an estimated construction cost of A$1.2 billion. The 12-level facility represents the largest capital investment in children's health services in Queensland's history. The Queensland Children's Hospital is categorised as a level six service, under the Clinical Services Capability Framework for Public and Licensed Private Health Facilities v3.2, 2014. This means it is responsible for providing general paediatric health services to children and young people in the greater Brisbane metropolitan area, as well as tertiary-level care for the state’s sickest and most seriously injured children. The hospital employs more than 2,500 people from a range of disciplines; and in its first year admitted almost 38,000 inpatients, saw 63,634 emergency presentations, performed 14,113 operations and provide 188,765 outpatient appointments.
Education and research
The Queensland Children's Hospital is world-renowned as a centre for teaching and research, providing undergraduate-, postgraduate- and practitioner-level training in paediatrics. It also plays a significant role in medical research, undertaking research programs with affiliated universities including The University of Queensland and Queensland University of Technology. It is co-located with the $134 million Centre for Children's Health Research, officially opened on 27 November 2015. The nine-level centre houses wet and dry laboratories, pathology services, a gait laboratory, a nutrition laboratory, and the Queensland Children’s Tumour Bank which provides a tissue repository for national and international cancer research.
Hospital name
During the early stages of the project, the hospital was known as the Queensland Children's Hospital. On 15 December 2013, the then Queensland PremierCampbell Newman announced that the hospital would be named after the renowned Queensland clinician, Lady Phyllis Cilento. On 21 September 2018, health ministerSteven Miles announced that the hospital would revert to its original name of Queensland Children's Hospital, after staff petitioned the Queensland government to change the name to a more "conventional" one, which the hospital's foundation said would secure more money from overseas donors. Miles claimed that an online poll showed strong support for the name change, but it was later revealed that many votes for the name change came from a small number of government IP addresses, suggesting there might have been an attempt by the government to rig the vote. Miles was referred to the Queensland Crime and Corruption Commission in relation to the poll. On 13 December 2018 workers began removing the words Lady Cilento from the sign on the building.
Designed for health and healing
The Queensland Children's Hospital was designed by architects Conrad Gargett Lyons. Based on the concept of a ‘living tree’, the building features a network of trunks and branches running throughout, leading to several outdoor gardens, terraces that fill the hospital with as much natural light as possible. The building design has received a number of awards including the 2015 Queensland State Architecture Awards the F.D.G Stanley Award for Public Architecture and the Karl Langer Award for Urban Design from the Australian Institute of Architects. At the 2015 Design and Health International Academy Awards, the Hospital design was awarded as the overall winner for Salutogenic Design Project for Healthcare Environment. In addition it was awarded Highly Commended for International Health Project over 40,000m2. Interior Design Project, Use of Art in Public and Private Spaces.
Schooling
The hospital provides educational programs to students from prep to year 12 for inpatients, outpatients and family members of hospitalised patients in a number of settings and locations across the hospital community. The intention is that children are able to continue their schooling while being treated at the hospital.
