Albany Medical Center

Last fall my father-in-law had a ruptured aorta and had to be taken to Albany Medical Center for surgery. This was obviously a very tough time for the family. I am very happy to say that after many long hours of surgery he was patched up almost good as new, but he was kept in intensive care under a medical induced coma for two days to let his injuries heal. After he awoke he was kept at the hospital for several days of observation.

While we were there, we had to walk all over that building, first to the emergency room entrance, then to the surgery waiting room on the other side of the campus and the critical care unit on the fifth floor and finally the normal hospital rooms. Even though we were constantly moving from wing to wing the mapping system employed there made the transitions easier to manage and the whole ordeal a little less stressful.

Albany Medical is like most hospitals I’ve been to, addition onto addition onto addition, which provides for constant grade changes and long hallways which seem to lead forever. Without their mapping system, finding our way through the maze of hallways would have been a nightmare. The mapping system consists of different color buildings, essentially different colors for each successive addition. Each hallway in the building had colored lines coordinated with the different areas of the building. To reach a certain area all one had to do was to follow the colored lines painted on the walls, reminded me of the yellow brick road at one point. At each intersection and each door there were signs perpendicular to the hallway so that you can immediately spot your intended destination. This allowed us to easily locate the, on premises, Dunkin Donuts for that initial long sleepless night.