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Digestive Center Opens In TGH's New Bayshore Pavilion

Tribune photo by JULIE BUSCH

Wendi Goodson-Celerin, nurse manager in the new Digestive Diagnostic and Treatment Center in Bayshore Pavilion at TGH, shows off features in one of the 32 medical surgical beds.

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By KEITH MORELLI | The Tampa Tribune

Published: September 4, 2008

TAMPA - Tampa General Hospital's new 340,000-square-foot Bayshore Pavilion, which features five floors of specialized care, is about to be fully online with the Digestive Diagnostic and Treatment Center officially opening for business next week.

The $198 million building overlooks scenic Bayshore Boulevard. The digestive center, which includes 24 pre- and post-procedure rooms with 32 medical surgical beds, is on the sixth floor and joins a women's center, a trauma and emergency area, a cardiovascular floor and an intensive care unit, all of which have already opened for business.

The hospital staff got a VIP tour this morning, looking in on sparkling clean and unused private rooms and state-of-the-art operating rooms. Nurse manager Wendi Goodson-Celerin said the wing will house patients with gastrointestinal issues.

"We will be full the first day, for sure," she said.

The wing will open for business Wednesday, and gastrointestinal patients from two other sections of the hospital will be transferred. About 15 doctors will be admitting patients. The wing has some 70 employees, including nurses, aids, dieticians, orderlies, pharmacists and social workers, she said.

Each room is private, and most have striking southwestern views overlooking South Tampa and Hillsborough Bay. All the rooms come with serene paintings or photographs depicting fog-shrouded country lanes and bucolic pastures. Others have calm seascapes or early morning woods. Plans are in the works to hang original artwork in the public hallways.

Each room has a computer for hospital staff to pull up medical records on demand. Free wireless Internet also is a feature, along with flat-screen televisions mounted on the walls.

Goodson-Celerin has worked at the 877-bed Tampa General Hospital for the past 20 years, and her new assignment has her smiling.

"It's wonderful," she said. "I came here when the West Pavilion was just a year old. This is a very nice environment we have. It's an environment that promotes healing."

Many gastrointestinal patients who will be transferred onto the new floor will leave an area that will open up to elderly patients, Goodson-Celerin said. Those patients, who are under cardiac care, are scattered throughout the hospital.

The new center represents the final phase of the Bayshore Pavilion, which was paid for through bonds. The hospital, on the northern tip of Davis Islands, also opened a new 65,000-square-foot emergency room opened in November.

Reporter Keith Morelli can be reached at (813) 259-7760 or kmorelli@tampatrib.com.

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