Critical care patients at King's Hospital can now visit rooftop garden

A London hospital has opened a rooftop garden where intensive care patients can spend time outdoors whilst receiving full clinical support.

King's College Hospital now operates the outdoor critical care space across its 97 critical care beds, which serve multiple specialised units including neuro, trauma, liver and general intensive care. Patients can be transferred to the garden for carefully managed visits.

Each transfer undergoes individualised clinical risk assessment. The Intensive Care Society notes that moving a patient to the rooftop garden carries the same calculated risk as standard transfers to other hospital areas.

The garden has been designed with infection control in mind, featuring no stagnant or running water to reduce environmental pathogen risk. Outdoor environments inherently pose very low cross-infection risk, according to clinicians involved.

Access to natural elements such as sunlight and rain can act as a powerful psychological trigger for recovery. The charity King's College Hospital Charity, which funded the project, described it as transforming intensive care into compassionate care where science, technology and empathy work together.