Children's Medical Center opens in Mesa
By Connie Midey
The Arizona Republic
MESA, Ariz. (Nov.2, 2009) -- To build a hospital that helps kids heal from the inside out, you start by talking to the kids. And their parents. And the medical staff that treats them.
Then you listen, says Rhonda Anderson, pediatric administrator at Cardon Children's Medical Center.
When the children's hospital, now inside Banner Desert Medical Center, moves into its new facility on the Mesa campus today, features sparked by those conversations will be apparent even from outside the seven-story tower. They range from a calming entry courtyard to medicine-free play spaces and homelike private rooms, each with a small refrigerator and sleep space for two adults, promising sweet dreams for their ailing kids.
The medical staff is growing, too, but health-care professionals have learned they aren't alone in holding the power to heal.
"If Grandma's chicken is the best thing for (a child), the family can bring that in," Anderson says. "Food is one of those creature comforts for all of us."
The strategies she and other Cardon employees set in motion to create a nurturing environment are echoed in a 2008 report from the National Association of Children's Hospitals and Related Institutions.
