Dozens of sick children moved to gleaming new expansion of Delaware hospital

WILMINGTON - They moved the sickest patients first - children in isolation, with ventilators and feeding tubes, blood pressure pumps and IV poles carrying many medicines.

A team of five or even six nurses, respiratory therapists, and doctors surrounded each bed, piloting it out of the old room, down hallways and around corners, applauded and cheered by colleagues at every turn, until each patient was safely reconnected to pumps and monitors in a new room.

In all, 120 patients, many of them critically ill, moved Saturday into a $270 million expansion of the Nemours/Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children in Wilmington. Each of the 144 beds in the new hospital building will be in private rooms, with two big-screen televisions, computer for the family, and bathroom fit for a five-star hotel.

The staff has held drills and simulations, simulations and drills, for the last year. The 24 children in the pediatric intensive care unit were scheduled to move first, one at a time.

"Losing catheters and tubes, and making sure all the equipment we need is in two places at once," said Scott Penfil, a pediatric intensivist, when asked what worried him most.

The Wilmington hospital opened in 1941; the facility that patients moved from this weekend is 30 years old. Paul Kempinski, chief operating officer, spoke over a public address system as the move began, quoting from remarks made by Francis Gaines - then president of Washington and Lee University - at that first dedication ceremony:

"Whenever one of these children shall leap more happily from a bed, whenever the radiance of laughter shall supplant the sob of suffering, whenever the radiance comes back to a little face that has been darkened with tragedy, there today and forever will be seen the monument to Alfred I. duPont."

Danielle Ruoff, 3, of Wilmington, was one of the first to move. An 18-wheeler rear-ended her father's car on I-95 two weeks ago. The little girl's car seat broke, and a rod from the seat slammed into the back of her head.

She has made great progress, breathing on her own again and is much more alert and responsive. Her parents feel she has received excellent care but still has a long way to go. She will need to learn to walk and talk again. Her parents aren't even sure she recognizes them.

Her old room was sterile and square, institutional floors, walls, and ceiling, no personality or privacy. It felt like a hospital. Her parents, like so many others, tried to make it feel like home, with stuffed animals and balloons.

As staff prepared to move Danielle into her new ICU room, her nurse, Kathleen Mullaney, had to laugh. Danielle's bed was full of glitter. For Halloween, her mother had dressed Danielle as a sparkling Elsa from the Disney movie Frozen.

Danielle slept through it all. Her parents, Mitch and Christine Ruoff, held hands walking behind her through the hallway connecting old building to new.

"Welcome, Danielle!" several staff cheered as she was wheeled into her new room, its floor painted with a curving splash of bright green. Families and children played a big role in designing the rooms, and green and blue were the colors most requested.

When staff asked why, patients and families explained what they missed most were grass and sky.

Danielle's room, like all the others, is pie-shaped, narrower at the doorway and fanning out beyond.

The front of each room has workspace for charting and documentation. The bed is in the middle, with a big-screen television on the wall. The widest part of the room is for families, with a big picture window, a couch that unfolds into a bed, a second high-definition television, desk and computer, refrigerator, and bathroom with shower.

"Did you see the bathroom?" said Christine. "It's half the size of the room!

"She's going to like the view," said Mitch.

From Danielle's window was perhaps the best view in the hospital - the original water tower on the grounds of Nemours, the adjacent duPont mansion.

"We wanted it to have a different feel than a hospital," said Brent King, chief medical officer. "This is all about families feeling comfortable in a difficult situation."

The exterior of the hospital is gleaming, glassy, and almond-shaped. Hallways are also curved. "The geometry of the patient room kind of set the shape for the building," said Lee Seggern, staff architect for the hospital. "As they stack next to each other, that's where the curve comes in."

The main entrance of the new building leads into an 85-foot-high atrium with skylights, bright even on a rainy day.

On the left is the Discovery Zone, a video screen running along an entire wall. Infrared sensors pick up the image of children (and this weekend, a parade of fascinated staff as well) and project their silhouettes onto the screen.

Aaliyah Alley, 4, of Newark, Del., rolled up to the wall in her wheelchair. She suffers from a bone disease and had an amputation last week.

"Oh, there's a rainbow now! See it!" Allison Micich, who works in business development but was volunteering in the lobby, said to Aaliyah. "Oh, there's Tinkerbell," Micich added.

Aaliyah tried to touch the fairy moving across the screen.

It was just after 9 a.m. She wouldn't be moving into the new building for several more hours. But she couldn't wait.

"We were dying to see the new expansion," said her mother, Maria Alley. "It's beautiful. The children are going to love it."

215-854-5639 @MichaelVitez