During my tenure as San Diego hospital photography artist, I’ve had the chance to photograph some truly important sites. For this project I got the opportunity to capture shots of an essential part of the region’s healthcare system; The UCSD Medical Center at Hillcrest’s Emergency Department. UC San Diego’s Hillcrest Medical Center is the focal point for UCSD Health System’s education and community service missions. The hospital recently engaged in several large project improvements, including the expansion of their emergency and trauma center designed by Mascari Warner Architects and constructed by KITCHELL.
The UC San Diego Medical Center, Hillcrest is the primary hospital for the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine.
As Sand Diego’s only academic medical center, UCSD Hillcrest Medical Center provides both primary care and specialized services. The important services provided by the center include a full range of surgery, diagnosis and management of genetic disease, as well as neurology, orthopedics, oncology, and the Sleep Medicine Center.
This center was recently renovated. The 386-bed hospital at UCSD Medical Center Hillcrest is the primary site for services such as the Comprehensive Organ Transplant Program, Bone Marrow Transplantation, San Diego Regional Burn Center. Infant Special Care Center, Birth Center, San Diego County's only academic Level One Trauma Center, and the National Institutes of Health-designated Clinical Research Center are also found at this state-of-the-art facility.
You can see in the images a facility that is poised to receive patients and offer treatment that is both comforting and professionally effective. The building is constructed (and recently renovated) to take advantage of technology to aid the medical practitioners as they administer care. For this project I was able to capture some of the employees at work. While this and most of my other targets are important structures in their own right, seeing those who bring the structure to life through their work is an added touch that focuses us on the cooperation between the staff and the building.