The Hospital of the Future - Maths in Health program was conducted over several lessons held at Kingswood High School and culminated in a tour of the NSW Health headquarters at St Leonards, providing students with a real-world experience of contemporary work environments.

“The lesson had great value in a whole range of ways, particularly in demonstrating how maths is applied in the real world and why it’s so important,” said Kingswood High School maths teacher Vittorio Bavaro.

“The tour was definitely a highlight, and the students asked a lot of thoughtful questions about careers.

“Most of our students had never seen a modern new workplace like that, so there was a lot of discussion on the way home about how welcoming it was and how great it would be to work there,” Vittorio said.

Feedback from students was very positive, with students describing it as “interactive” and “a great experience” and saying they “loved the building and felt very welcomed”.

Part of the introductory lesson included a presentation on the range of jobs in health beyond the familiar clinical roles, such as project and asset management, graphic design and communications.

“Before the event, they were really only aware of careers as doctors and nurses in health,” said teacher Ailya Zaidi.

“Participating in the activity showed them all the work that goes into creating and maintaining a hospital and broadened their knowledge of the industry and career opportunities,” she said.

For Year 9 Maths student Isaac, it was a great day.

“It was good to see all the opportunities you can get here, and it made me more interested in working in health,” Isaac said.

His team chose to design a mental health facility with a warm and welcoming atmosphere for patients which avoided a “sanitised and daunting” environment.

“All patients should have control over decisions in their lives. Even the smallest decisions should be performed by the patients, to give the sense of control to them,” Isaac said in his presentation with fellow team members, Riley and Felix.

Seven groups presented to an expert panel on the day which included representatives from NSW Ministry of Health and Health Infrastructure, and a representative from Health Infrastructure’s successful graduate program which targets emerging industry talent.

Student Yukti said she enjoyed designing the hospital.

“Designing the hospital was fun so I would go with that as a career. I liked the design part of it,” Yukti said.

Her team partner Haya, whose mother is a doctor, said it was an opportunity to better understand her mum’s working environment.

Their team thought about the needs of the staff working behind the scenes.

“We don’t usually see those people in hospitals and that’s really important,” Haya said.

Health Infrastructure Senior Advisor - Capability Development Claire Bigelow said it was incredibly rewarding to see how invested and engaged the students were in considering the needs of the community and creating unique responses to the activity.

“There was such humanity brought to their designs and this was reflected in the way they presented their projects,” Claire said.

“They used the language around being patient-centric and talked about collaboration and co-design with community.”

She said she was particularly impressed by the considered approach from each team.

One of the teams had a cylindrical design, and several had created computer-assisted design models, and the maths calculations were outstanding.

“They put their own spin on a traditional hospital design and did some incredible maths” Claire said.

“You could see that they were looking at projects through the lens of sustainability and interpreting that in terms of initial building costs and the lifetime cost of the facility.

“To see they were thinking in those ways was really encouraging because it was so purposeful and meaningful,” she said.

“I would love to see the program expand in the coming years.”

Vesna Slepcev, Ministry of Health Senior Analyst, said the event showed the benefits of collaborating across agencies.

“It was wonderful to see the students so engaged with creating their unique ‘Hospital of the Future’ and applying maths to real world scenarios,” Vesna said.

“I was thrilled to see the students’ interest in maths, healthcare and exploring future NSW Health careers, and we hope to build on the program in the future.”