The former 'San Gennaro' hospital in Napoli, in the heart of the Sanità district, becomes a structure ready to offer answers to patients affected by chronic, progressive and incurable diseases.
Within the district Lea, the Hospice San Gennaro provides an integrated complex of professional healthcare services of a medical, nursing, rehabilitative and psychological nature.
But also social, protection and hotel services, as well as spiritual support for people affected by diseases for which there are no treatments or, if they exist, they are inadequate or ineffective for the purposes of stabilizing the disease or significantly prolonging life.
The new facility was built on the fourth floor of the east wing of the historic health facility on a surface area of 1.500 square meters, divided into 3 different areas: an area intended for residential use (approximately 725 square meters), an area intended for the evaluation of therapies (approximately 115 square meters), a general support area (approximately 200 square meters and approximately 460 square meters of functional connection spaces).
The project was supervised by the 'Planning, Programming and Development of Interventions on Real Estate' Operational Unit of the ASL Napoli 1 Centro, which made use of architects and engineers (permanent employees of the ASL Napoli 1 Centro - special Pnrr office), who also directed the works and testing, coordinated by the architect Antonio Bruno.
In order to try to alleviate the suffering of the guests, the spaces were conceived in relation to their needs, the need for privacy and socialization, social dynamics, psychological factors and assistance and spiritual needs.
"The goal - explains Bruno - was to create a structure capable of interpreting the needs and being in tune with the emotions and difficulties of patients, companions but also of the operators. We wanted to create an environment that could alleviate suffering and transmit serenity, for this reason we chose finishes, colors and furnishings capable of transmitting as much as possible the sense of home and therefore a welcoming, familiar environment".
The hospice provides continuous care and assistance, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, through a multidisciplinary and multiprofessional team. All hospital rooms are single and equipped with a three-section bed with an anti-decubitus mattress and provide adequate space for a companion to stay overnight.
The rooms have a table where you can eat, a sofa bed and a dedicated bathroom suitable for use by users with motor disabilities. The furnishings and details are designed to make each room welcoming and comfortable.
Furthermore, spaces dedicated to meeting and socializing have been designed (multipurpose living room, multimedia relaxation room, interview room, even corridors) both between users and between users and companions.
"A hospice - the words of the health director Maria Corvino - is a place of emotional suffering, but it is also a space that can and must transmit serenity and moments of relief for the body and the soul. When the disease no longer responds to active treatments, psychological, social and spiritual problems become a priority. The purpose of the palliative care is to give the patient and his family the best quality of life, at the end of life, possible”.
The days spent in the facility are conceived as a journey into art, wonder and memories, but also a journey for new encounters, made of socialization and sharing. A peculiarity of the project is that it draws inspiration from the interpretation of the numbers of the smorfia, for their intrinsic ability to evoke values linked to Neapolitan tradition, to the sense of family.
The installation project – curated by Bufera srl – extends to the entire structure, conceived by dividing the spaces according to their shared use (corridors and collective spaces) or private use (patient rooms) to create heterogeneous, but at the same time harmonious, environments.
The choice of the numbers represented took into account the functions of the environments to be set up, in particular, for the twelve hospitalizations and the day hospice, some numbers were selected relating to characters and subjects of the smorfia that could characterize the individual environments with their own personality, making them immediately identifiable and distinguishable.
Along the corridors and common areas, there are also paintings depicting numbers that can be traced back to themes or figures with a collective dimension (for example, Vesuvius, laughter, the hand, Saint Anthony, the Madonna). In the multipurpose room, dedicated to collective activities, a painting was created that is inspired by the number of the celebration, linked to the tradition of the tarantella, a symbol of aggregation and joviality, as well as a tool for conciliation and conviviality for the Neapolitan community.
Inside the living room, a sensorial olfactory space has been set up, 'Breathe in your memories', a library with jars containing typical scents of the experiences and places that belong to the guests. The aim is to make the patients and their families relive, through smells, pleasant memories of their lives, such as that usual coffee at the bar in the company of colleagues, that spring day at the seaside or that walk in nature, or the smell of "vasinicola" (basil) that recalls evenings at the pizzeria with family or friends.
“The San Gennaro hospice team will guarantee the best possible service to patients with intense, continuous, highly professional and humane care, as well as pharmacological treatments, care, listening, support and above all respect for the person”.
Thus Anthony Magdalene, head of the Palliative Care Operations Unit. The activation of the San Gennaro hospice, the first publicly funded hospice for the city of Naples - another is planned in Scampia at the Sciuti health facility - represents for the general director of the ASL Napoli 1 Centro Ciro Verdoliva “an important sign of attention to the development and implementation of palliative care for the territory necessary to guarantee the dignity at the end of life of each patient and the support of the family in a welcoming and comfortable environment and demonstrates the ability of the Regional Health System to adapt to the care needs of a medicine increasingly attentive to improving the quality of life of the sick, in particular those affected by an incurable disease”.
The hospice is then a "further stage of a more complex intervention relating to the San Gennaro complex; in this regard, the start of work on the House and Community Hospital is expected by November 30, for the redevelopment of the internal courtyard, elevators and restoration of the main facade by December 15 and the restoration of the internal and external facades by next February".
Article published on November 17, 2023 - 07:52
