At an event held at the Peterborough Regional Health Centre (PRHC) on Wednesday (August 6), the PRHC Foundation celebrated the opening of a $1.5 million donor-funded Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) courtyard and also announced a $10-million expansion of the foundation’s Campaign for PRHC.
“To our donors, you are helping reimagine mental health care in our region, and you’re even helping to influence a reimagination across our province,” said PRHC Foundation president and CEO Lesley Heighway. “Mental health is one of our Campaign for PRHC pillars because we know that where we heal determines how we heal.”
The new purpose-built PICU courtyard will support the recovery and well-being of some of the hospital’s most vulnerable mental health patients by giving them the opportunity to receive treatment and spend time outdoors.
With PRHC president and CEO Dr. Lynn Mikula not in attendance, the hospital’s president of finance and corporate services and chief financial officer Jen Taylor called the courtyard a “visionary innovation,” noting that one in three Canadians indicate their mental health has significantly worsened since the COVID-19 pandemic.
As with hospitals across the country, PRHC has seen an increase in patient volumes with over 31,000 mental health visits last year alone.
“Our mental health and addictions department has worked hard under the weight of stigma associated with mental illness within a hospital building that was designed way before mental health was a priority,” Taylor said.
“While attitudes are changing, PRHC’s mental health patients continue to be treated in spaces that aren’t designed to support their healing,” Taylor added. “Patients in our six-bed psychiatric care unit have never had access to the outdoors, even though their stay could be weeks or even months long. This remarkable PICU Courtyard is a game-changer for our hospital and patients.”
PRHC’s PICU provides care to individuals who are experiencing a severe episode of mental illness. It serves a regional population of up to 300,000 people, taking referrals from feeder hospitals without a crisis unit or with limited mental health support staff.
Designed not only by those who work in the mental health field but by those who have lived experience with mental illness, the new courtyard is specifically designed and constructed using materials and a layout that support therapeutic practices.
Research has shown that access to safe outdoor spaces, natural light, and fresh air improves recovery outcomes, reduces length of hospital stays, and lowers the need for antidepressants.
The courtyard includes colourful native vegetation to attract butterflies, which aid in mindfulness, as well as seating areas that offer patients solitude or space to connect with loved ones.
There is also an open gathering space for group activities and connection building, a shaded area to accommodate patients who are sunlight-sensitive due to their treatments, and a tactile recreation surface for yoga and other physical activities.
“When (we’re) feeling like things are not so great in our lives, one of the first things we do is reach out to somebody and go for a coffee or go for a walk,” said PRCH’s director of mental health and addictions Jennifer Cox. “This just provides (PICU patients) the ability to be able to do those things that you and I would do.”
“In mental health care, it’s a toolbox of things that we use to help folks, and so our patients can learn themselves, when they come out here with their staff member, to build their own toolboxes. It provides staff with that extra resource, but it provides patients with the awareness of what works for them.”
Over the coming months, the surroundings of the courtyard will continue to be improved with more landscaping work. A rock wall and gardens full of shrubs, trees, pollinators, and perennials swaths, as well as seed mix, will be added to the hill leading to the hospital’s south entrance behind the courtyard.
Cox said the new courtyard is now considered the new “gold standard in mental health care,” and hospitals around the province have been showing interest in designing a similar space.
“PRHC is a large regional centre and some of the work that is happening here is truly groundbreaking,” said Heighway. “I know that the team here, since announcing the opening of this courtyard, has had inquiries from some other major hospitals in the Toronto marketplace where their psychiatric intensive care unit patients don’t have access to the outside. They’re looking at what we’ve done here, in some cases, and just saying ‘Wow’.”
“Our community has stepped forward, and how remarkable that we were able to bring this to fruition.”
The completion of the courtyard gardens is not the only thing PRHC has in the works over the coming months. During the event, Heighway shared that the hospital has brought forth “extraordinary visionary future-focused projects,” that will change the delivery of patient care across all areas of PRHC.
To meet that need, the PRHC Foundation announced they have altered the $60 million Campaign for PRHC into the $70 million Campaign for PRHC. Kicked off in June 2024, the campaign is the largest in the hospital’s history, and approximately $55 million has already been raised.
“We’re ready to rise to the occasion once again, and we know that our incredibly generous community is ready too,” said Heighway. “That’s a $10 million expansion that will allow our hospital to move forward with cutting-edge initiatives that directly respond to the specific healthcare needs of our community.”
One such innovation is to invest in a digital command centre — a centralized operating system which will have the entire digital realm of the hospital integrated under one hub in one location. Still in its early stages of planning, the investment will make PRHC among the first community and regional hospitals in Ontario to invest in a digital command centre of this kind.
“It’s a unique, regionally specific part of the solution to some of the common issues hospitals are facing, including wait times to access care, patient volumes and capacity challenges, and inefficient patient flow-which all contribute to our perception of patient and quality care,” said Heighway.
“This is a bold transformational project, and we’re excited to say, ‘Yes, let’s support this, let’s reimagine health care’ — just like donors have done through the PICU courtyard we’re celebrating right now.”
The additional $10 million will also support surgical innovation projects that are still being deliberated, as well as a “buffer” to fund projects that come up and require the hospital to be responsive.
Heighway said the PRHC Foundation will continue working with donors of all levels, including monthly donors and those hosting fundraisers, to raise the total remaining $15 million in the Campaign for PRHC.
“It’s our hospital — it’s mine, it’s yours, it’s our friends, our families, and our loved ones,” Heighway said. “We need that care to be fantastic and world class when we need it. People rally behind that and see themselves in some of the pillars of our campaign. If their lives have been touched by cardiac care, cancer care, vascular care, they see themselves in that and we’re very grateful.”
