While birth rates in Spain are falling and women have new demands, our aim with the client was to secure long-term sustainable service and business – ‘better births = more births’.

Situated in the heart of Madrid, Nuevo Belén hospital is a small, traditional maternity clinic. The project to create a new birth unit at the hospital has been a fascinating project; not only was a new space built but the input and interests of medical professionals who now work in childbirth were also catered for.

While this project was under development, the hospital decided not to risk its traditional way of attending births in the central surgery area, so this continued unchanged while the new birth unit was built. This provided an optimal situation to compare two very different maternity ward concepts in one and the same building, both managed by the same medical director.

Through proactive teamwork, everybody in the hospital was prepared for the changes while the construction work was carried out. The birth unit opened in September 2013, since when data on birth outcomes have been collected.

Specific conditions are needed for a good birth room: natural light and views; silence; privacy and good internal connections to surgery room; NICU, etc. An empty hospital wing on the ground floor was selected, with eight patient rooms converted into the new maternity ward.

These new spaces made it possible for professionals to work in a completely different way. We’re also now observing some fascinating project side-effects, with some features spreading to the hospital’s traditional obstetric areas.

This project will be presented as a case study, focusing on certain details and sharing results on how these changes can affect or alter clinical attention.