Wayfinding project to roll out in the New Year

Starting in January Kingston General Hospital will be a lot easier to navigate for patients and families. That’s when you’ll start to see our new wayfinding system roll out, as new signage and maps will begin to appear around the hospital. This work will make the facility more patient and family focused, helping people find their way to appointments, meetings or to visit someone.

One of the major features of the wayfinding system is that all the wings in the hospital will be identified by the wing name along with a colour and symbol.

“For years we have heard that patients, families and even our own staff get lost when they are walking around KGH and we hope this project will help with that,” says Erin Eardley, Project Coordinator. “To do that, we want to make sure that there are a number of ways to identify your location. If you can’t remember a wing name, you may remember the colour or symbol to help find your way.”

The project will first focus on levels 0 and 1 as they are the most heavily trafficked areas of the hospital for patients and families. Signage will be put up beginning in the Armstrong wing first and then in other areas in the hospital. A team of staff from around the hospital, working with Patient Experience Advisors will then review the new signage before work on levels 2 to 10 begins in April.

“To make it easier to get around, we will also reduce the number of wing names at KGH,” says Eardley. “A number of buildings will now be folded under one common name. We currently have 13 wings with individual names; this will be trimmed down to eight.”

They are:

• Armstrong (formerly FAPC)
• Kidd/Davies (formerly Kidd wing and Davies wing)
• Connell (no change)
• Douglas (no change)
• Dietary (no change)
• Victory (formerly Victory, GIDRU and Empire)
• Burr (no change)
• Watkins (formerly Watkins, Nickel, Angada and Doran)

As part of the work to rename several of the wings, staff from the Protection Services Department will be reassigning new door numbers in the new Watkins and Victory wings in January. They will also update the fire and life safety systems in these areas. Angada will also have its floor numbers changed from 0 to 4 to 1 to 5.