Our new place
Our new place - Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre
| A new place. A bigger place. A place built for cancer. | |||||
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| Peter Mac has always been a place for cancer discovery and a place for cancer care. In over 60 years, we have grown in so many ways. The number of people seeking treatment at Peter Mac; our knowledge of cancer treatment; our research team involved in finding more ways to better treat cancer; and the range of treatments and care we offer, have all increased remarkably. And we have become part of a great global evolution in cancer science and cancer care. But we’ve outgrown this place. We’ve pushed capacity at our East Melbourne campus to the limit. We face an inevitable struggle for space – space that can meet the changing and highly specialised needs of cancer patients and cancer research. Every year, we see more and more patients, we now have more than 2,000 staff; our number of cancer researchers has more than doubled in the past ten years. In 2016, our care and our discoveries will move to a new place, a bigger place, a place purpose built for cancer research, treatment, care and education. We’ll still have the same great team of people, but our new environment will be more comfortable for patients, their families and carers and tailor designed to meet their unique needs. It will be a place that enables our people to continue to deliver the very best care and continue with world-class cancer discovery. And it will enable even greater collaboration with our healthcare and research partners. We will share the building with Melbourne Health, which will benefit from new cancer research space and clinical services, and The University of Melbourne which will have new cancer-related research facilities. All building partners will also benefit from new education facilities. | |||||
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| A new place. | |||||
| Peter Mac’s new home is located in the Melbourne suburb of Parkville, Australia's premier biomedical and research precinct. It includes clear way finding, with the central atrium the building’s navigational touchstone. Light filled and extending up through the centre of the building, it ensures an intuitive solution for visitors and staff to orientate and navigate the building. A key functional approach to the building is the location of clinical floors on the lower levels to make journey more direct for patients either by curved feature stair or lift. Peter Mac will share the building with Melbourne Health, which will benefit with new cancer-related research space and some new cancer-related clinical facilities, and The University of Melbourne which will have cancer-related research and education facilities. | |||||
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| A bigger place. | |||||
| The new building is 120,000sqm in total. It includes approximately 700 car parking spaces and 400 bicycle parking spaces including an end-of-trip facility for staff, 22 lifts and three bridge links between the new building and The Royal Melbourne Hospital. There will also be 47 seminar and meeting places as well as a large lecture theatre. Eleven gardens and terraces are included throughout the new facility plus three on The Royal Melbourne Hospital site. | |||||
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| A place built for cancer. | |||||
| Welcome hall | |||||
| Discrete areas will be provided in the welcome lounge where inpatients will be admitted and new patients directed to their clinical destination. Small areas have been set aside for impromptu educational groups – including an amphitheatre area leading down to Radiation Therapy. Our research outcomes, and those of our building partners, will be celebrated on the walls of the ‘Research Walk’ which will include both static and dynamic displays. A Place of Peace will be located on the ground floor and, as with our current facility, will be a place of celebration for weddings or memorial services. Retail services will also be included on the ground floor. | |||||
| Same day chemotherapy, medical and surgery | |||||
| The new facility includes 110 chemotherapy, medical and surgical same day beds and chairs. It features six operating theatres, two procedure rooms, 27 treatment rooms and 97 consult rooms. A same day unit includes the medical day unit, chemotherapy day unit and apheresis. Apheresis is in a discrete area, creating privacy for patients while maintaining close links to the public lifts. The chemotherapy area has been separated into two distinct pods and all chemotherapy chairs have access to natural light and views. Supporting the activities of these services is the cytotoxic pharmacy, located adjacent to the chemotherapy area. | |||||
| Outpatients | |||||
| Outpatients and allied health will be collocated, with an outpatient pharmacy also in close proximity. The outpatient area will include a variety of lounges including a welcome lounge, lounge with beverage bay, age appropriate lounges and play areas for adolescent and young adults and paediatric patients. Waiting areas will have the capability to divide into active and quiet zones. Outpatients will also feature refreshment points, and positive distractions such as artwork and external outlooks. | |||||
| Inpatients | |||||
| The new Peter Mac features a 32 bed medical inpatient unit, a 32 bed haematology inpatient unit, and a 32 bed surgical inpatient unit, while a 32 bed haematology inpatient unit is to be located on The Royal Melbourne Hospital site. The haematology ward features 100 per cent single bed rooms while other wards will feature 70 per cent single and 30 per cent double bed rooms, all with natural light and external views. The surgical inpatient unit is located adjacent to the operating theatres providing ease of access for surgical patient flow and for surgeons and anaesthetists. All rooms feature an ensuite and an entertainment system with internet access for patients. A minimum of two larger rooms have been incorporated on each ward for friends or family to stay, and each ward includes a patient lounge with beverage bay and interview rooms to meet with family, friends and carers. | |||||
| Intensive care | |||||
| Forty-two Intensive Care Unit (ICU) beds are to be located in a new unit on The Royal Melbourne Hospital site, with a bridge linking the operating suite with the new ICU. Staff amenities are included adjacent to the unit with meeting and interview rooms located on the floor above which can be accessed by an internal stair. | |||||
| Radiation oncology and cancer imaging | |||||
| Eight radiation therapy bunkers are included with five linear accelerators in operation initially. The building will be future proofed for cyberknife technology. Radiation treatment and planning areas are collocated on the same level and patients will be able to access radiation therapy directly from the car park. The building includes space for four CT machines, four PET/CT machines, three MRIs, one intra-operative MRI on The Royal Melbourne Hospital site, and space for one intra-operative MRI at Peter Mac, for diagnostic and staging purposes, and RT planning as well as other imaging facilities for clinical and research purposes. | |||||
| An interactive hub | |||||
| An interactive hub, located between the research laboratories on the upper floors and the clinical and dry research areas on the lower floors, is at the centre of the building. It forms a meeting place, encouraging collaboration and formal and informal meetings among staff. The hub includes cafes, a landscaped roof deck, meeting rooms and informal lounge areas and breakout spaces, which will promote impromptu interactions that generate ideas and extend the breadth of thinking. The hub will also feature one of the three bridge links to visit The Royal Melbourne Hospital further enhancing the interactions between clinicians and researchers. | |||||
| Research | |||||
| More than 25,000 square metres of research space will house ten dedicated purpose-designed research laboratory clusters, enabling space for more than 1,200 cancer researchers. | |||||
| Wet laboratory research floors including the animal facility will be located on the upper levels. The research floors have been arranged with lab clusters across the north and east sides of the building with adjoining office and write up spaces located to take advantage of the views to the entry and informal staff decks on the south side. A PC2 category stair will enable researchers working in PC2 laboratories to visit another PC2 lab on an adjacent floor without leaving this classified space. A PC2 corridor will join the laboratory clusters together. A general stair will provide connectivity between the research floors. Space for 323 dry researchers is also included. Dry research areas will be collocated, maximising the opportunities for researchers to collaborate and share information. The research areas have been designed with flexibility to enable maximum opportunities for reconfiguration to meet changing research needs and priorities. | |||||
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| Peter Mac thanks the Victorian and Commonwealth governments for their support of this project. | |||||
| We encourage you to register here to receive updates and to visit the VCCC Project website for more information. | |||||
| Or please email your inquiry, together with a daytime telephone number to: | |||||
| ournewplace@petermac.org |
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