The circular building housing the casualty and isolation departments at Skåne University Hospital (SUS) in Malmö, Sweden – designed to offer the best possible prevention against the spread of infection – is set to become the hospital’s striking new landmark.
Patients enter the isolation ward via a special airlock leading from the top floor corridor that encircles the building. External lifts are provided exclusively for infectious patients and removal of hospital waste – with internal lifts for staff movements and incoming supplies. In addition, individual floors can be subdivided into smaller isolation units in the event of an epidemic.

VISIONS FOR THE NEW BUILDING
• To promote general well-being and a safe environment for patients and their relatives.
• To create a functional and inspiring workplace set in a striking architectural framework providing spacious workstations with plenty of natural light.
• To create a building which communicates and accentuates the hospital compound’s new, main entrance.
• To create a building which symbolises the hospital’s profile as a modern, humanist, high-technology place of work.

CASUALTY DEPARTMENT AND TRAUMA CENTRE
The new casualty department is responsible for injured and acutely ill, somatic patients, and includes a Children’s Emergency Ward, Community Health Care and a Referral Clinic. Treatments are carried out efficiently and safely, conforming to the highest national and international standards.

With its facilities for treating all types of acute patients, the casualty department at Skåne University Hospital is the largest and busiest accident and emergency facility in Sweden.

The entire casualty department has been planned with optimal logistics in mind – focusing on the patient and on the potential for staff teamwork. This results in fast and functional treatment and care of the highest quality.

ISOLATION DEPARTMENT
The isolation clinic houses a new infectious-diseases department with a total of 51 single-bed rooms and a modern reception facility. This makes the Malmö isolation department Sweden’s largest and most modern infectious-diseases facility.

In spite of the need for isolation, the building invites in natural daylight. The wards – which have been laid out as “slices of pie” around the periphery of the building – benefit from direct, natural light. Because the cylindrical building has a central, open atrium, the “inner-circle” rooms also benefit from natural light, giving all rooms in the building direct daylight except the corridors, which – through the glazed wall sections – benefit from indirect natural light from the rooms.

Patients can be wheeled directly into the isolation wards from the outside via a glazed top-floor corridor. Between the top-floor corridor and the ward there is an airlock which maintains the partial vacuum necessary to control ventilation and thereby the risk of the spread of infection. Staff enter the wards from their work areas in the core of the building through corresponding airlocks.

The large, glazed areas from floor to ceiling in the generously dimensioned, state-of-the-art, pie-shaped rooms enjoy a view of the surrounding city. This gives the isolated patients the feeling that the life of the city is invited into their sick rooms.