Published: May 14, 2009 10:05 pm      

Open house to show off new TB unit

The public will have the chance to tour a new $1 million unit at Pinecrest Hospital today.

Also, they will see what Mountain State University professors say is the beginning of a valuable partnership between the university and hospital that will ultimately benefit its residents.

From 1 to 3 p.m., the hospital will host an open house and ribbon-cutting for its new tuberculosis unit and library that MSU students recently remodeled.

Pinecrest Chief Executive Officer Angela Booker said the new TB unit cost an estimated $1 million in state funding. The unit is in a different location which has been gutted and rebuilt. The locked card-access-only facility also features negative air flow, which is designed to lower the risk of infection spreading.

Pinecrest’s unit will only house a maximum five patients instead of the old TB unit’s 10, Booker said. No TB patients are presently housed at Pinecrest, and the unit will officially open in July.

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Residents will also have the chance to see the results of a partnership between Pine-crest and MSU. Dr. Robert Hayes, director of both MSU’s psychology and graduate programs, said both graduate and undergraduate psychology students have worked to renovate the hospital’s library and some hallways.

In the library, books and shelves alike were aging. Hayes said students placed containers throughout MSU’s hallways and collected hundreds of donated books. They also raised money to pay for paint used for murals in the 3B wing of the hospital. Renovations also included four chandeliers.

Hayes said the hospital and university’s psychology program have begun a cooperative venture designed to give both students hands-on experience and patients and staff a brighter place to work. According to psychological practices like the Boston Rehabilitation Theory, patients’ moods and overall conditions improve when they are in a brighter, more comfortable environment.

“Basically, if you’re in a drab environment, you feel drab,” Hayes said. “We want to de-emphasize the nursing home/hospital feel and make this place an acceptable place for one of our family members.”

MSU renovation work at Pinecrest will continue, Hayes said. The next project will entail renovating the hospital’s reception area. Hospital staff members have done work outside the entrance that includes a coy pond, but students will focus on the indoors.

Students also undertake practicum field placements at the hospital, Hayes noted. All of this, he hopes, will get the students out of the often-isolated world of universities and show them how textbook theories actually work.

“This will bring the textbook to life,” he said. “You learn so much more from human interaction than you will never learn in the classroom. It doesn’t click until you get out into the world.”

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