Patient Lesa Williams cuts the ribbon at a ceremony celebrating the opening of the new Vanderbilt University Medical Center Regional Burn Center as her 5-year-old son, Lesly Williams Jr., also a patient, and others in attendance look on.
photo by Dana Johnson
Burn Center makes move from round wing to VUH
Dexter Anderson talks to his wife, Amisha, as she settles into the new Vanderbilt Regional Burn Center. Amisha was the first patient moved to the new area on the 11th floor of Vanderbilt University Hospital.
photo by Dana Johnson
Jannah Branch-Smith, R.N., left, and Faith Reed, R.N., M.S.N., right, move patient Nathan Goolsby through the tunnel to the new Burn Center last Friday.
photo by Dana Johnson
Vanderbilt University Medical Center's Regional Burn Center moved into its new $3.7 million home on the 11th floor of Vanderbilt University Hospital last week.
Expansion and relocation of the 22-year-old center, formerly housed in the round wing of Medical Center North, will increase capacity from 20 to 29 inpatient beds while adding private rooms for all patients, state-of-the-art bedside computer telemetry for monitoring of vital signs and a new on-site Burn Clinic. It also places the service closer to the Trauma Center.
It was already one of the nation's largest Level I centers with 20 beds, but annual capacity has increased since 1999 from 180 patients to 600 patients and 2,500 outpatients.
“We just needed to grow,” said Jeffrey Guy, M.D., director of the Regional Burn Center. “People think the burn unit is a Nashville thing, the minority of our patients actually come from Metro Nashville.
“We get patients from eight states. We have grown together with LifeFlight because of the advent of the fixed wing [airplane] … that was good for both of our programs, which is why we are getting patients from the whole Mid South.”
The considerable growth in patient volume is also related to the closing of burn care facilities at other hospitals in Tennessee and bordering states including Mississippi.
“Here lately we have been overflowing so much that our patients have been going everywhere in the hospital,” said Michelle Terrell, R.N., manager of Patient Care Services.
“Louisville only has five beds, Chattanooga only has five, so us having 29 beds is just going to attract more and more.
“Dr. Guy has done a wonderful job from a marketing perspective,” she added. “This is something we hadn't done before he came … no one was really out there saying, 'If you get burned, we want you to be here. We want to take care of you.'”
The approximately 40,000-square-foot center is a far cry from the makeshift unit at Medical Center North, where patients were transported to the trauma center via the underground tunnel connecting to VUH.
“There were increased expenses due to safety precautions that were redundant; basically we were using two of everyone to transport somebody,” Guy said.
“It was a seasonal facility in the winter — you could have put mothballs in the burn unit. But this is no longer a seasonal practice.”
Another change under Guy's direction was the addition of a clinic to improve patient care while keeping the overall institutional costs down. In the old facility, that clinic was essentially a converted waiting room.
“Vanderbilt has been gracious to continue to support our mission. Some people call it a mission; other people might call it a ministry. The burn unit is really a family and this beautiful facility is going to, I think, bring us to the next level,” said Guy, also associate professor of Surgery in the Division of Trauma and Surgical Critical Care.
“This isn't just bricks and mortar, you have created an environment where very dedicated nurses and doctors are going to save lives, improve people’s lives … you have created a space where families are going to be able to be at the bedside and help in nourishing people back to where they belong.”