In 1920, the original Children’s Hospital on Brook Road changed the health care landscape in Virginia by creating a hospital dedicated to children. One hundred years later, we continue to put kids first – and in just two short years, they’ll have an all new tower designed to provide world-class inpatient, emergency and trauma care, just for them.

What makes the new Wonder Tower so exciting? Lots of things, really, but here are five big ones.

1. The building

2. The clinical care

Children aren’t little adults and shouldn’t be treated as such—our medical team knows that. Whether it means understanding the many complexities of pediatric illnesses and specialized practices or just knowing the right way to communicate and make a procedure a little less scary, our care providers have specifically trained to work with children. They specialize in accommodating kids’ unique medical needs and offering the added level of empathy, expertise and time they may need. The tower’s new dedicated clinical spaces, including a Level 1 pediatric trauma center, reflect this and serve to make our care providers’ jobs that much easier and their outcomes that much better.

3. The patient rooms

There’s more to staying in a hospital than just getting medical care, especially for kids. Their room should be somewhere a kid can be a kid, where a family can sit around and roll their eyes at Pop’s latest dad joke or go head-to-head in a board game. A place that optimizes medical performance, but still makes space for favorite posters, photo collages and all the other personal, human touches that make it feel a little more like home.

4. The play spaces

When we say built for kids, we mean all kids—kids of different backgrounds, different sizes, different developmental abilities, with different favorite sports and different favorite foods. We’ve made it a point to meet the needs of children of all ages, from newborns all the way up to 20-year-olds. And because we know it can be extra hard to feel “normal” while staying in a hospital, we’ve worked diligently to add other touches that encourage moments of warmth and comfort.

5. The considerations for the health care team

With the completion of the new children’s tower, the world-class environment will mirror the outstanding care our team provides. We’re also committed to giving our health care team the time, resources and tools to not just do their great work, but to feel good doing it. This includes adding spaces for them to recharge, collaborate with each other and optimize organization to enhance their precious time spent directly with patients. We consider families and loved ones to be an integral part of the care team and have made efforts to ensure they have their own spaces to refresh and re-energize too.

LEARN MORE ABOUT THE NEW WONDER TOWER COMING IN SPRING 2023