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Diary of building a veterinary hospital; September summary

As it is the last day of the month, we thought it time to check in and update you on what has happened on-site over the course of September.

The short answer is ‘lots!’. September has, as we anticipated, been a really busy month with lots of progress being made on a daily basis. Here is our round up.

Walls, walls….and more walls

 This month has been all about building walls. And it definitely seems that walls are springing up everywhere. We started the month with marked out spaces on the floor, and from there, the partition walls were built in a short time allowing us to really get a feel for our hospital. It feels amazing!

We put together a short video of our theatre and dog ward area with all the partition walls now built, so please enjoy the tour.

 

Currently all of the walls are one-side boarded and this week, the team have been working on getting the required services into the cavities. So that is the electrics and where required, plumbing. We should be able to start closing up the walls from next week. From there, it will just be a case of filling and finally painting. And in due course, applying our decals and imagery to give the hospital its character and atmosphere.

The final colour options and finishes are being worked on by our interior design team and will be confirmed shortly. We are dedicated to ensuring that the principles of compassionate care (or fear-free practice) are followed for our patients. There has been evidence to show that animal anxiety could be lessened by carefully selecting animal-friendly lighting and colours. And so, we have been working on this basis and choosing colours that are considered to be animal-friendly.

 Design is thinking…made visual

Lots of progress has also been made on other design elements. Now that we have walls and doorways, the next step is to install the doors, which are now on order. Flooring has also been ordered and as you can see in the below photograph showing the hospital floor plan, there are a few different floor coverings planned.

We have also placed orders for our consulting room furniture; for the storage furniture in each of the clinical spaces, we have chosen David Bailey HealthLine furniture. David Bailey specialise in furniture manufacture for the healthcare and veterinary market.  As well as providing fitted furniture to NHS and private hospitals and dental practices, they also have veterinary specific solutions. These should be arriving in the next few weeks!

In addition to the fitted furniture, we have also been ordering our examination and surgical furniture. Technik are manufacturers of stainless steel equipment for the veterinary sector and in our site manager’s office are a stack of drawings. Each room has its own plan detailing which furniture will be included. Very excitingly, this furniture has now also been ordered!

 

Ordering…made easy

And as well as ordering furniture, we have also started our equipment purchasing! By far, our most exciting purchase this month has been our oxygen cages.

We have ordered three cages as well as a recovery cage (with heated floor) across our dedicated dog and cat intensive care units. Snyder, based in the US, manufactures these units. And they will ship them from the States. Oxygen therapy is necessary for patients suffering from a variety of breathing problems. For example, pneumonia, heart failure or bruised lungs. These cages are one of the ways in which we will provide oxygen therapy. They are especially useful for cats and we can’t wait for them to arrive!

And our ordering will continue as we are about to place an order for our syringe pumps (a device that is used to gradually and consistently provide fluid or medication through a fine needle under the skin), our phacoemulsification machine (for cataract surgery) and our X-ray machine. More ordering will undoubtedly follow in the coming weeks as the hospital equipment lists are finalised.

And that is it for this month in the diary of building a veterinary hospital. The hospital conversion really has come on leaps and bounds in the past few weeks. Every time we visit the site, it looks so different. As Shailen Jasani, Founder and CEO of The Ralph commented recently – “When the walls went up and all the rooms were suddenly formed, it was really disorientating…and I put the floor plans together!” We are wondering if we need to put a tracking device on him!

Thanks for stopping by and reading this week’s instalment. Please check back in soon.

Take care,

The Ralph team

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