Kaiser Opens New San Diego Hospital
High-tech facility creating new nursing jobs in San Diego
By Melissa Wirkus Hagstrom, contributor
As if you needed another reason to consider San Diego for your next travel nursing job, one of the largest health care providers in the country has just added a brand new, 461-bed hospital.
On April 25, 2017, Kaiser Permanente opened its newest medical center in San Diego, featuring state-of-the-art equipment, cutting-edge design and a host of eco-friendly features and amenities.
Green building meets high-tech patient care
The new Kaiser Permanente San Diego Medical Center (SDMC) has been making headlines, for not only creating new nursing jobs and other positions, but also for its innovative use of technology and green building materials. The facility was constructed using 2.8 million pounds of reinforced steel, 1,800,000 glass bottles and 32,500,000 aluminum cans.
The building’s unique use of recycled materials in the construction process is just one of many distinctive attributes. The newest San Diego hospital also features the latest amenities to enhance the patient care experience such as guardrails to assist with fall prevention efforts, pain-level monitoring and caregiver alerts, over two miles of walkable paths, and a meditation room and healing garden.
The new facility claims to be “one of the most technologically advanced medical centers in the world.” It is home to robotic and image-guided surgical equipment and touch screen digital signs.
Patients at the new SDMC are able to control their hospital room environment with a remote control that can turn on lights, close the blinds and adjust the temperature. They can also kick back and relax while watching their 75-inch monitor that provides bedside access to on-demand education, room controls, room service, internet and entertainment.
The new Kaiser hospital is one of only a few nationwide to earn the prestigious LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Platinum certification from the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC).
The new San Diego Medical Center stats
According to Kaiser Permanente, nearly 1 in 5 San Diegans already utilize Kaiser’s hospitals and clinics for their health care needs, assuring the new facility will be widely used in the community.
The 7-story, 617,000-square-foot San Diego Medical Center, with 461 beds, will be available to more than 610,000 Kaiser Permanente members in San Diego County.
It also created more than 1,900 jobs, including 1,000 hospital jobs and more than 900 construction jobs during the building phase.
Nursing jobs at the newest Kaiser hospital
Approximately 1,000 nurses are employed at Kaiser’s new San Diego Medical Center.
Anne Marie Watkins, DNP, MSHCA, RN, CENP, chief nurse executive, Kaiser Permanente-San Diego and Zion Medical Centers, said that nurses at Kaiser Permanente are the cornerstone of their health care team.
“Working for Kaiser Permanente as a nurse offers numerous opportunities to learn and advance in our practice and deliver expert care while putting patients, families and members at the center of everything we do. We support our nurses in every way to provide them with the groundwork for their nursing practice by unifying efforts across the care continuum via our integrated mode,” Watkins said.
“At SDMC specifically, we have created an environment where innovation, technology and nursing care merge to offer the optimal care experience for our patients,” she continued. “Specifically we have incorporated workflows to integrate technology with our electronic medical record and provide our patients as much control over their care as possible.”
The SDMC will complement Kaiser Permanente’s existing San Diego hospital on Zion Avenue, as well as Palomar Medical Center, which serves as Kaiser’s plan hospital in the northern part of San Diego County through a collaborative agreement with Palomar Health.
“All of the maternal child health services including labor and delivery, postpartum, NICU and pediatrics have been moved to the San Diego Medical Center,” Watkins said. “Both [SDMC and Zion] campuses have medical-surgical, perioperative, emergency and critical care services.”
Travelnursing.com partners with AMN Healthcare’s travel nursing agencies, which have a longstanding relationship with Kaiser Permanente; that means their travel nurses can often get the choicest assignments at Kaiser’s hospitals and clinics. The new SDMC signals a time of exciting growth and opportunity for both staff and travel nursing jobs in San Diego.
You, too, can work in “America’s Finest City”
San Diegans boast that they have the best weather in the country, plus 70 miles of beaches, a thriving downtown, and more than enough choices for recreation, dining and cultural activities to keep residents and visitors happy year-round.
Why not get paid to travel here and live in free housing as a travel nurse?
Travel nursing jobs in San Diego continue to be plentiful; in fact, the city often leads the nation in terms of open assignments. Nurses looking for new opportunities in cutting-edge facilities can find jobs at Kaiser’s San Diego hospitals and many other prestigious medical facilities, including Sharp Healthcare, Rady’s Children’s Hospital and others.
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