GALVESTON, Texas – Shriners Children’s Texas is celebrating the completion of its new patient housing facility and parking garage.
The facility increases the hospital’s capacity to serve more patients, providing a residence on-campus where patients and their families can live during their recovery and extended hospital stay.
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The facility looks less like a hospital room with beautiful colors and the comforts of home. Patients like Kechi Okwuchi can attest to how children can thrive in a familiar, less clinical setting.
“I feel like it’s an answer to many people’s prayers. It’s going to be something that makes life so much easier for caretakers,” Kechi Okwuchi said. “But I also love the fact that it is its own building because caretakers also need to have their own space sometimes, especially when it comes to, you know, just how present they have to be for the care of the kid. They need to take time away from time and, you know, recharge.”
Kechi is familiar with this because she was one of two plane crash survivors in her home country of Nigeria in 2005. She suffered third degree burns over the majority of her body.
“Something that my mom would have loved to have just been easily accessible,” Kechi said,
After a tour of the new facility, Ije Okwuchi, Kechi’s mother said, “I almost teared up because I thought to myself this is, this is so Shriners... They like to find out what they can do extra to make the patient forget that for a while that they’re in the hospital.”
In addition to the new residential space, this grand opening celebrates Shriners Children’s Texas having their own parking garage.
“The housing unit negates any need to get a hotel, which in the past we had to pay to house them in hotels,” explained Dr. Leslie Stewart, President of Shriners Children’s Hospital. “And we had to pay for parking. As you know, that’s always an issue here on the island and we’ve leased spaces from UTMB. Now with the addition of a 300-vehicle parking garage, that’s going to alleviate that problem both for us.”
It’s a significant upgrade to the hospital’s campus that will improve the healing process for future patients and their families.
“I love the fact that now caretakers are being taken care of. You know, they can come here and know that we have a space to relax or not to worry and have that hanging over their heads while they’re pouring everything they have into these kids,” Kechi Okwuchi said.
