Imagine watching your favourite movie while undergoing an MRI.
The grating beeps and buzzes of the machine faint behind dialogue and your periphery of the room around you completely cut off – making you forgot you’re in the hospital.
Innovate lighting, video and sound technology designed to completely immerse a patient undergoing an MRI – that’s what patients at Logan Hospital will experience in the newly upgraded imaging department.
Radiographer Des Hardman, the hospital’s MRI team leader, said everyone’s ability to tolerate MRIs was different.
“Every patient needs something special,” Mr Hardman said.
He said there was a range of medical conditions that could prevent a patient from sitting still.
He said some patients suffer from claustrophobia or anxiety, while others are simply children.
In these cases, the MRI, which can take up to 1.5 hours, is performed under sedation or general anaesthesia.
But thanks to the new technology, this process can sometimes be diverted completely.
Now patients can watch movies, television shows, or even clips of hot air balloons and underwater animations – it’s their choice.
Mr Hardman said not only was it relieving patients’ stress, but it was also saving the hospital precious time and resources.
“It means we have a greater success rate, and it’s time we don’t have to spend administering anaesthesia to a patient,” he said.
Mr Hardman said anaesthesia was a risk that could be avoided.
“Some kids who have needed anaesthesia for an MRI before come in here and don’t,” he said.
“We had a 13-year-old girl in here earlier who had a range of medical issues, but she was able to tolerate the MRI.
“She was great – she even asked me to put on a YouTube channel she wanted to watch.”
The machine has been built so the patient’s peripheral vision is blocked out, and the room is filled with coloured light corresponding to the video they’re watching.
Mr Hardman said preparation for an MRI could take over half-an-hour, especially if anaesthesia or sedatives were involved.
He said staff were already overseeing between 10 and 13 MRIs a day.
“But we’re hoping to add five to eight more once we build up the service,” he said.
The department sits on the bottom level of the new eight-floor building, and is fitted with multi-million-dollar fluoroscopy, x-ray and CT scanning equipment.
It’s a highly clinical space, filled with sophisticated machinery only decipherable by experts.
Additions like these can be seen throughout the hospital, whether it’s an expanded pathology unit that enables staff to study a patient’s blood faster, a new outdoor garden for patients receiving end-of-life care, or 14 new beds in the intensive care unit.
The four new floors also include hundreds of new beds and several new wards – cardiac, coronary, medical assessment and palliative care – that are already treating patients.
Now all that’s left for the $460 million first stage of the expansion project are the final touches, which include refurbishing the palliative care ward and ICU.
A Metro South Health spokesperson said construction of stage two of the $1 billion project would start later this year.
Once complete, it will feature 112 additional beds and 10 new operating theatres.
