Fiona Stanley Public Hospital

Reviewing a hospital has never been high on my agenda, but when you find yourself in the Children’s Emergency room at Fiona Stanley Hospital, all nervous and nail-​biting, stressing out and unsure, you do kind of pay attention to little details. Especially when your «little one» is there.
Thankfully she is all good now.
For the last few years, I have been whizzing past Fiona Stanley on the freeway as the construction continued and ended. I have endured and listened to a few chat shows on AM radio as they debated the recent opening and inevitable teething problems that ensued. But now I’m no longer the vagrant passing by. I’m the customer!
First impressions? As I approached from the Faringdon Road side you can’t miss it and the plethora of signs telling you were to find the hospital. But when you turn off the side road and into the «complex» you kind of get the feeling that you are entering a new city. I had been told to go to the Children’s Hospital part, and I have to say, I did a couple of loops around the «complex» before returning for a second run, and only then finding where I needed to go (which was right beside the main Emergency entrance). Which by the way is very green and obvious when you look for it.
My stupidity or poor sign-​posting? I think a bit of both. It was at 6.30 in the morning, but I do think it could have had a more prominent ARROW telling you were to go as it was off to the left about 100 metres. (I saw lots of signs regarding Mental Health wards and I made note of them for my own future use!
Parking was easy: about 30 (10 minute) bays right in front. I eventually parked directly opposite on one of the 2 hour bays (also easy).
Inside the Children’s Emergency check in room, you do get hit with a degree of «wow» factor. Everything is new and not terrifying, soothed by the few colourful pictures, mural stickers, and animals. Even the staff had new dark blue uniforms with the Fiona Stanley logo emblazoned on them. Once my daughter has been given her bed (number 64 to be precise), I noticed how new the beds were. Even the privacy curtains had a date on them saying when they were hung and when they were to be replaced (I think about two months from now). iPad-​like devices seemed to provide touch screen access to whatever a doctor needed.
For the general public, I would say this: your money has been amazingly well spent. If I wanted to be treated anywhere, this is where!
As a final note, I did go to get a coffee whilst waiting for the doctor to do his bit. This is directly opposite the Children’s Ward (about 100 metres), or as the ER nurse said in her broad Scottish accent, «By the wavy building».
She was right. You walk out the door and slightly up the hill to your left through an amazingly well-​landscaped garden. The pathway kind of zig-​zags up the hill, yet everyone cuts through the flower beds and grassed areas leaving a bit of destruction in their way. Perhaps the designer should have taken this into account as many of us are in a stressed-​out rush to get a coffee and don’t want to take the scenic route.
Hopefully I’ll never be back again but well done the government. Money well-​spent.

At the time of writing, this hospital is unfinished, but I checked it out the other day purely for interests’ sake. The architecture is super-​futuristic, which I love, because it will look endearingly shit in fourty years’ time. That’s (hopefully) within my lifetime, so I look forward to this cutting edge look slowly dating and fading. Seriously though, it’s a nice building to look at. There’s a fairly high likelihood that I’ll spend my final minutes here and on the evidence of its’ façade, I don’t have a problem with that. An interesting site for wannabe architecture nerds to check out.