The only department of child psychiatry in Małopolska at the Children’s Hospital of St. Ludwika in Krakow will operate in a new building. A dozen or so hospital clinics will also be located in the modern pavilion opened on Friday.
The investment – the largest in the hospital’s 134-year history – cost PLN 23 million and was financed by the voivodeship self-government as part of the Multiannual Investment Program for the Małopolskie Voivodeship 2007-2013. Construction took 18 months.
We have great specialists, and from today the standard of this hospital is changing dramatically, which gives us opportunities for development – told journalists the director of the Provincial Specialist Children’s Hospital of St. Ludwika Stanisław Stępniewski.
The usable area of the new pavilion is over 4 sq m. sq. m. On the ground floor there is a 25-bed day ward for child psychiatry, a 20-hour ward with XNUMX places and a mental health clinic.
As emphasized by the head of the children’s and adolescent psychiatry department, Dr. Elżbieta Pasyk, hospitalizations at psychiatry are sometimes longer than the stays of sick children in other departments.
Now the conditions for the functioning of our department will change, which gives greater therapeutic possibilities. The aesthetics and modernity of these places, their colors will certainly have a soothing effect on patients and support the treatment process – Dr. Pasyk told PAP.
More than a dozen specialist hospital clinics will be moved to the first floor of the building. There is a car park for staff and patients in the basement. The patron of the new pavilion is prof. Maciej Leon Jakubowski – the founder of the hospital, the first professor of paediatrics in Poland.
The first patients will be admitted to the new location in October.
The management of the hospital intends to launch soon: dog therapy in cooperation with the Jak Milk Chocolate Foundation, a cystic fibrosis clinic, and to extend services in rheumatology and allergology. Two new children’s clinics have been operating since September – cardiology and endocrinology. From January, a computed tomography diagnostic laboratory is to be launched, equipped with equipment thanks to the Great Orchestra of Christmas Charity.
In the Hospital of st. Ludwik in Krakow, which was launched in 1876, was the first pediatric department in Poland and the third in Europe. Currently, its staff consists of 243 employees, including 35 doctors and 25 residents. (PAP)