Your Hospital Room

In your hospital room at Gillette Children’s, we strive to provide the care you need in a comfortable environment. We’ve equipped the space to address your medical needs and support other aspects of your daily life.

During a Gillette hospital stay, you have access to:

• Showers
• Laundry facilities
• Refrigerators and microwave ovens for storing and preparing food and drinks you bring from home
• Free Wi-Fi service

Each patient room includes:

• A bedside telephone
• A television
• Most rooms include a DVD player. In-room video game systems also are available

Upon arrival, you’re invited to fill out an “All About Me” poster. The poster provides space to share information about your child’s likes and dislikes, and to give us ideas about how to help your child cope with difficult parts of treatment.

The “All About Me” poster helps staff and volunteers provide the best possible care. After it’s completed, we display it in a frame in the hospital room, where health care providers can see it.

The hospital bed includes controls and equipment to meet your child’s needs and help keep them safe.

• We show you how to adjust the mattress position using the controls.
• For safety, please keep the bed rails up unless someone is right next to the bed.
• To call for assistance at any time, press the button at the bedside. When it’s pressed, a light goes on outside the hospital room and at the nursing station. A staff member will respond as soon as possible.

Monitors and other equipment in your room and throughout the hospital make a variety of beeps and other noises. Don’t be alarmed. Your nurse can explain what the different sounds mean. Please do NOT turn off any monitors or other hospital equipment.

Who can stay overnight at the hospital?

• One adult—parent, immediate family member, caregiver or other person 18 years or older—may stay overnight in the patient’s hospital room. If someone plans to do so, please tell a nurse when you arrive. Our staff will prepare a bed and provide bedding for the guest each evening.
• If the patient needs care in our Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU), one adult can stay in the room in a reclining sleeping chair. If more than one adult wants to stay overnight, the second person can sit in the room or ask a nurse about other sleeping options.

What’s the process for staying overnight?

If anyone plans to stay in the hospital room, tell your nurse. Our staff will prepare a bed and provide bedding for the guest(s) each evening. If you need extra sheets, blankets, bedspreads or pillows, let us know.

In addition, a Ronald McDonald Family Room^® might be available for overnight stays. Our Ronald McDonald Family Room includes limited sleeping accommodations for family members of some patients. Our staff identifies who may stay overnight. Families of children in the PICU receive top priority. For more information, call a Gillette social worker at 651-229-3855.
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What about longer stays?

If family members or friends need nearby lodging during the patient’s hospital stay, see the lodging list in your preoperative packet. It includes several hotels that offer discounts to Gillette patients’ families. You can also see the list at gillettechildrens.org/lodging.

Showers are available for patients and their families. We can provide towels and washcloths. Ask your nurse for information.

A washer and dryer are available to you during certain times of the day. Please ask your nurse if you’d like to use them.

We encourage you not to bring personal and valuable belongings (including watches, jewelry and cash) to the hospital. If you bring such items—and can’t send them home with a family member or friend after you arrive—you may store them in the locked cabinet in your room. We also provide a small closet or shelf for other belongings.

If you think you’ve misplaced something, please tell someone at the nurses’ station as soon as you notice the item is missing.

Room Service

While staying in the hospital, your child receives breakfast, lunch and dinner daily from Regions Hospital Food and Nutrition. Meals are delivered to the hospital room between 6:30 a.m. and 7 p.m.

You may choose meal items from a menu in the room. Menus are available in several languages, including Spanish, Somali, Hmong and Vietnamese.

• Meals may be ordered several days in advance.
• In most cases, you can call to order a meal for your child. From the hospital room phone, dial 3633. From any other phone—even when you are outside the hospital—call 651-254-3663.
• If you haven’t received your order within 45 minutes of your call, please inform your nurse.
• If you or your child needs help placing a meal order, just let us know and we can help.

On the Rehabilitation Unit, if a meal order isn’t placed by 6:30 p.m. the previous day, your child receives a standard menu selection for that meal.

On other units, if a meal order isn’t placed, Regions calls your child’s nurse near the end of the meal period. The nurse helps determine if your child can choose meal items at that time or if they should receive a standard menu selection for that meal.

Special Dietary Needs/Requests

• Please remind your nurses and doctor of any food allergies.
• If a special diet is part of your child’s treatment, we make every effort to accommodate it.
• Kosher, vegetarian and other special types of meals are available upon request.
•  Staff can also deliver formula for tube feedings.

Meals for Family and Visitors

You and other visitors can buy food and beverages in several locations throughout the hospital, and bring meals back to your child’s room. Additionally, many nearby restaurants deliver food to Gillette—ask your nurse to see menus.

Bringing Food from Home

Refrigerators are available to temporarily store a few of your food items. Most units have a small refrigerator in each hospital room. In the Neurosciences and Rehabilitation units, a large refrigerator is in the kitchenette near the nursing station.

We provide stickers to label your food with your name and the date you store it. Please apply the stickers to items you put in the refrigerator, and please use your food within 48 hours. We discard food stored for longer than that.

Microwave ovens are also available within some hospital units and in family lounges near other units. Popcorn is not allowed in Gillette microwave ovens.

There’s a telephone in each hospital room. It has its own, specific telephone number, which you may give to others so they can call the room directly.

Room Telephone Instructions

• For all calls, dial 9 to get an outside line, then dial the number. If the number isn’t in the 651 area code, include the correct area code when you dial.
• For toll-free numbers, dial 9-1-[toll-free number].
• To call a Gillette phone number, dial just the last four digits.
• For help making a domestic or international long-distance call, ask your nurse.

You may use cellphones and other wireless mobile devices in your child’s hospital room. While using them, stay at least three feet away from clinical electronic equipment.

You may use cellphones and other wireless devices freely in areas where patients don’t receive care, such as hallways, cafeterias, lounges and waiting areas. As a courtesy to other patients and families, please don’t speak loudly when using a phone in your room or elsewhere in the hospital unit.

You can use the free Wi-Fi to access the internet from hospital rooms and waiting areas.

Access Instructions

• With your wireless device powered on and wireless connectivity enabled, search for available wireless networks.
• Select our guest network, “gcshguest.” No password is required.
• The network will check to see if your device contains malware. If malware is detected, the connection will be rejected.
• After a few seconds, if no malware is detected, your device should connect to the network.
• If you have problems or questions, ask your nurse to call the Gillette helpdesk.

Each bed has its own television. Most beds also have a DVD player. Often, Xbox video game consoles are available. We have DVDs and video games you may use. Ask your nurse for more information. In the Adult Unit, each room also includes a radio and CD player.

If you bring any of these items from home, please label them with your child’s name.