@NianticGiffard Could you please make a statement about hospitals?
Since wayspots are two-dimensional, how can we know if a wayspot on a piece of art on the first floor is blocking an emergency ICU on the third floor? Are we only supposed to worry about Emergency Room ground floor entrances?
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, everyone! Just pitching in to say, as long as the nominated object is meeting the Wayspots' acceptance and eligibility criteria and does not obstruct the driveways of emergency services or interfere with the operations it should be a valid Wayspot.
@NianticGiffard The problem is that there are a certain number of judges who think that anywhere on the hospital premises could interfere with the operations. It would be better if the places that meet the rejection criteria (lobbies, emergency exits, etc.) were specifically listed.
What parts of a hospital or on a hospital grounds are acceptable considering the emergency services guideline? Specifically hospital gardens, artwork, statues, historical markers or other indoor locations at hospitals.
When considering Wayspots at a hospital, please avoid locations where gameplay would get in the way of medical professionals and other essential workers. This guideline should also be applied to all areas where essential work is happening. Unfortunately, that means that locations inside and around a hospital are ineligible. Gardens or statues outside that are publicly accessible could be eligible so long as playing nearby wouldn’t interfere with hospital operations.
@NianticGiffard Are you sure you want to change the hospital guidance to say that the ONLY sensitive place on hospital grounds is the emergency room driveway? So if a hospital cafeteria has a nice statue, with surgery rooms and ICU above that cafeteria, you're saying the art is a good wayspot. Most people in this thread agree with you that anything should be fine inside a hospital (if it qualifies otherwise). But I think NianticCasey's reply makes far more sense, safety wise.
BUT Wayfarer criteria change, and I try to keep up.
Statues in front of a main lobby would be fine. Usually that's separate from the emergency entrance. If it's in something like a roundabout with pedestrian access, I think it would still be fine, because you're still not blocking the emergency entrance. These things don't necessarily have to be FAR from the emergency area, just not in a position to block it. Same floor is fine, as long as the ICU is a different area.
As far as the different floor thing, I think you would be hard-pressed to tell that an ICU is right above or below you, unless you, as the submitter or reviewer, investigated where all these things were. I think if you can show in your photos that whatever POI you find inside is simply in a normal common area/walkway then you're fine.
If you default to the simple (correct) reading of the criteria, the only rule of thumb is that the POI itself doesn't interfere with operations. I don't think it's relevant or practical to consider the three dimensional space on floors above or below it, which don't actually contain that POI.
In my area, we often send out private cars instead of ambulances during childbirth, and when we do so, we often park our cars in front of the regular lobby instead of the emergency vehicle entrance.
I don't think a statue in the lobby would interfere with this, but the front door is not something I agree with.
Anything in Emergency room, entrance to, driveway to, or ER patient area is 1* rejection.
Anything outside of that specific area that would be an eligible Wayspot normally is an eligible Wayspot within a hospital setting.
Since you can't place portals on a vertical, everything is based on a x and y grid, the floor something is located on shouldn't matter. If it has the potential to block emergency access its a 1*. Keep in mind that when using terms like ICU's those are not emergency rooms. The ER is very different and separate from a surgery ward or ICU or outpatient services. Additionally the main lobby to many large hospitals are generally open to the public, have a reception area or information desk and are often adorned with art and statues from donors. They may have the ability to turn into an emergency response area if needed but that is not their intended purpose 99% of the time. These would normally make great locations for Wayspots, but each case needs to be judged on its own merits.
I will point out that this is not what anyone in the thread above who is for some stops in the hospital is advocating. Very likely, they're not even aware of stop acceptance/rejection criteria.
In this instance, I happen to agree with you that this should absolutely be rejected.
Wanted to re-up this thread with a comment that I have recently been seeing nominations that appear to be coming from staff or volunteers at a pediatric children's cancer hospital, who are trying to add more stops that are accessible for those kids. Seems like a lot of them are getting one-starred for "blocking emergency services" because I am seeing re-nominations with all-caps text that says that the stop doesn't block emergency services, etc.
Anyway, just a reminder that sometimes these kinds of stops are actively solicited by people involved with the hospital.
I work at a hospital that has no emergency services. We do long term rehab for people who have been in life changing accidents. We have a family housing building where we offer hotel like stays for families of patients who've had to come from more than 50 miles away. Our patients will be with us for at least 6 weeks, sometimes many months. Our whole goal is to get them back to "normal" life. For many, that means playing video games. We have suites set up with video gaming equipment for recreational therapy. In my opinion, having Wayspots around the campus is just as important for those who may be Niantic gamers.
But since it is difficult to get people to approve wayspots on hospital grounds, I've placed all my submissions outside: therapeutic garden, donor statue, art hanging on an exterior wall (on an inaccessible 7th floor balcony), etc.
The only wayspot we had when I got here was a stop in the roundabout entrance that actually could block ambulances dropping patients off with us (all patients arrive by ambulance from another hospital). However, I flipped that to a gym in 2019 and we've never had any trouble with people blocking access to our facility while using the gym. (I never see any of the portals in use in Ingress.)
I recently even got 1 new wayspot appeal approved on campus by Niantic to give me another one out at the street, near the bus stop.
As someone who spent 5 days in the hospital this summer without access to ANY wayspots, I'm going to make it my mission to add wayspots in hospitals. It sucks to be stuck there and not be able to get your daily spins.
Do people think of a "hospital" as being a single building? Many modern hospitals are complexes with extensive grounds and multiple buildings, only one of which is an emergency department. The grounds can and often do include, as others have noted, gardens, fountains, art, etc. Someone in my area has recently been nominating all kinds of art pieces and historical displays at a large hospital complex and I've been amazed at the extent and quality of art at the grounds. They are absolutely there to be viewed and enjoyed as a semi-public space.
Hospitals have soooooo many things that can be eligible, as @Janetx68-PGO points out. Even if it's just donor plaques! There's a donor plaque outside the bathroom on the floor I work on because someone donated the money to have it redecorated years ago. People love giving money to hospitals and hospitals LOVE displaying those people's names. Keeps donors happy and keeps them pouring money back into the place. One of the POI I got approved was a life-sized statue of a woman who was a multi-year donor to our hospital - like, funded a couple of buildings level donor.
Man, there's definitely some cranky gatekeepers in this thread who lack common sense or have no knowledge of how hospitals work.
I worked as a security guard in a hospital for many years. That hospital had a TINY portion of its floor space dedicated to the ER. There was the ambulance bay driveways, which clearly would have obstructed access - fair, easy denial there. There was the main walk-in door for patients bringing themselves/family into the ER - fair, easy denial for points too. The ICUs were multiple floors above the main, ground-level areas.
Then there were... roughly 17 other accesses into the building that likely wouldn't even be within SIGHT of the ER and/or ICUs. Most of those access points had local art pieces, massive paintings, or historical monuments/displays. Most of them were set up for families to meet and socialize with patients away from the clinical settings. Many of them have references on them specifically calling them "Meeting Point A" so that families could easily communicate and organize where to meet up when they got on site.
Everywhere else in the building was essentially public access which would not restrict or block emergency services in any way, shape, or form. Areas which the public did not have right or access to - secured by swipe cards and/or door locks. We had a chapel (public access 24/7), multiple libraries (public access most hours of the day), huge atriums for dining/family gatherings, family gathering rooms in EVERY UNIT. The percentage of that hospital that was off-limits to the general public was probably in the low 10-20%.
Heck, there was a huge 3-level garden for patient and family access - specifically there for SOCIAL gatherings as modern healthcare is completely aware that is a crucial part of patient care and health.
We had an entire wing of the building for children who are suffering from horrific diseases. We had dozens of rolling carts for video games and toys and other distractions for those kids and their families - kinda like how PoGo is.
Now, as I have grown up and moved on from working there, I have had to spend way too much time in a hospital - if you're not there with a purpose (ie - an employee who is working with a goal), they're horrible places where time ticks by slowly and you're surrounded by **** and misery. It's not a happy place for the most part - healthy, hale, and content people don't generally spend their time there.
If you handed me a top-down map of that hospital, I could blanket it with waypoints, with only a tiny area off limits from the ERs. Standing on the ground floor (since vertical height is irrelevant in the game) would get you access to almost every square foot of that place's footprint, all of which would be publicly accessible without bothering a single emergency personnel. Having worked in another half-dozen hospitals and visiting many more otherwise, I would suggest that's similar across Canada (as I've been in them in at least 4 provinces).
So, to the gatekeepers saying they'll auto-1* a hospital - give your heads a shake. Patients need distractions from the reality of their situations. Family members waiting for the doctor to tell them that their loved one is dead or dying need distractions from that. Recuperating people need things that break up the monotony.
And yes, maybe your country does things differently, but hospitals are public buildings here in Canada at least, where the public has the right to enter and be inside.
Covid changed the public access part. In our hospital you must prove a reason for being there. But that will eventually go back to normal. The main thing is that no one is hanging out at a hospital, not even for a game, if they don’t have to be there. And if they have to be there, a game can make it a little better being there.
Our local hospital used to have several portals, which in pogo was a gym and stops. However management requested removal of the POI across all games - staff were not happy. There are still spawns in PoGo but as you often have to wait around having some POI would add interest. But that’s the way it is.
I've been wondering about this. There's 2 listed buildings at a hospital near me, the buildings arw also part of the hospital, but its more a set of offices/GP's, than actual hospital. I've thought about submitting them but the fact is they are part of the hospital has made me wonder if its worth it or not
I would give them a try as both sound interesting and the listing makes it clear that these are not patient focussed. They might be rejected or you might establish that actually the whole site is blocked. But they might get accepted.
The bottom line is: What does Niantic want in their database?
But NianticGiffard's response included "or interfere with the operations" which could mean about anything. A wayspot of lobby first floor art could be chased on the 8th floor, where there's a surgery room.
Theres a 3rd listed building next to those 2, a clock tower, it's closed off (like, fencing round it and everything) but it's in the game, so I dk t think the area is blocked off. I'll give it a try over the weekend then, can't hurt
My local hospital (Royal United at Bath, UK) has several portals in the grounds. When I had to stay there after my stroke the Doctor treating me even took my phone down to the nearest one to hack it so I could keep my Ingress sojourner.
Comments
@NianticGiffard Could you please make a statement about hospitals?
Since wayspots are two-dimensional, how can we know if a wayspot on a piece of art on the first floor is blocking an emergency ICU on the third floor? Are we only supposed to worry about Emergency Room ground floor entrances?
Thank you.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, everyone! Just pitching in to say, as long as the nominated object is meeting the Wayspots' acceptance and eligibility criteria and does not obstruct the driveways of emergency services or interfere with the operations it should be a valid Wayspot.
@NianticGiffard The problem is that there are a certain number of judges who think that anywhere on the hospital premises could interfere with the operations. It would be better if the places that meet the rejection criteria (lobbies, emergency exits, etc.) were specifically listed.
@NianticGiffard
Can something in a hospital qualify? I read a statement like this once.
NianticCasey-ING Posts
What parts of a hospital or on a hospital grounds are acceptable considering the emergency services guideline? Specifically hospital gardens, artwork, statues, historical markers or other indoor locations at hospitals.
When considering Wayspots at a hospital, please avoid locations where gameplay would get in the way of medical professionals and other essential workers. This guideline should also be applied to all areas where essential work is happening. Unfortunately, that means that locations inside and around a hospital are ineligible. Gardens or statues outside that are publicly accessible could be eligible so long as playing nearby wouldn’t interfere with hospital operations.
@NianticGiffard Are you sure you want to change the hospital guidance to say that the ONLY sensitive place on hospital grounds is the emergency room driveway? So if a hospital cafeteria has a nice statue, with surgery rooms and ICU above that cafeteria, you're saying the art is a good wayspot. Most people in this thread agree with you that anything should be fine inside a hospital (if it qualifies otherwise). But I think NianticCasey's reply makes far more sense, safety wise.
BUT Wayfarer criteria change, and I try to keep up.
As far as I can catch up:
Statues/fountains in front of main lobby or emergency entrance -> fast 1* rejection
Hospital park, library, chapel or mosque far from emergency services -> acceptable
Statues, paintings, etc. on the ground floor but there are any ICU on the same spot but different floor -> acceptable(?)
Statues in front of a main lobby would be fine. Usually that's separate from the emergency entrance. If it's in something like a roundabout with pedestrian access, I think it would still be fine, because you're still not blocking the emergency entrance. These things don't necessarily have to be FAR from the emergency area, just not in a position to block it. Same floor is fine, as long as the ICU is a different area.
As far as the different floor thing, I think you would be hard-pressed to tell that an ICU is right above or below you, unless you, as the submitter or reviewer, investigated where all these things were. I think if you can show in your photos that whatever POI you find inside is simply in a normal common area/walkway then you're fine.
If you default to the simple (correct) reading of the criteria, the only rule of thumb is that the POI itself doesn't interfere with operations. I don't think it's relevant or practical to consider the three dimensional space on floors above or below it, which don't actually contain that POI.
In my area, we often send out private cars instead of ambulances during childbirth, and when we do so, we often park our cars in front of the regular lobby instead of the emergency vehicle entrance.
I don't think a statue in the lobby would interfere with this, but the front door is not something I agree with.
Just been reading the most recent comments on this tread, then this "nomination" appears on my screen for review.
Clearly the person submitting this has no understanding or has not read the Niantic accept / reject criteria.
If you think that is bad, there is a local who keeps submitting the helicopter pad for the flight for life.
Anything in Emergency room, entrance to, driveway to, or ER patient area is 1* rejection.
Anything outside of that specific area that would be an eligible Wayspot normally is an eligible Wayspot within a hospital setting.
Since you can't place portals on a vertical, everything is based on a x and y grid, the floor something is located on shouldn't matter. If it has the potential to block emergency access its a 1*. Keep in mind that when using terms like ICU's those are not emergency rooms. The ER is very different and separate from a surgery ward or ICU or outpatient services. Additionally the main lobby to many large hospitals are generally open to the public, have a reception area or information desk and are often adorned with art and statues from donors. They may have the ability to turn into an emergency response area if needed but that is not their intended purpose 99% of the time. These would normally make great locations for Wayspots, but each case needs to be judged on its own merits.
I will point out that this is not what anyone in the thread above who is for some stops in the hospital is advocating. Very likely, they're not even aware of stop acceptance/rejection criteria.
In this instance, I happen to agree with you that this should absolutely be rejected.
Wanted to re-up this thread with a comment that I have recently been seeing nominations that appear to be coming from staff or volunteers at a pediatric children's cancer hospital, who are trying to add more stops that are accessible for those kids. Seems like a lot of them are getting one-starred for "blocking emergency services" because I am seeing re-nominations with all-caps text that says that the stop doesn't block emergency services, etc.
Anyway, just a reminder that sometimes these kinds of stops are actively solicited by people involved with the hospital.
Love the "disagree" on this, where there isn't even an opinion stated, just facts surrounding a series of submissions.
Some people like to keep myths alive about wayspots that are more difficult to access for the general public, or they feel uncomfortable accessing.
I work at a hospital that has no emergency services. We do long term rehab for people who have been in life changing accidents. We have a family housing building where we offer hotel like stays for families of patients who've had to come from more than 50 miles away. Our patients will be with us for at least 6 weeks, sometimes many months. Our whole goal is to get them back to "normal" life. For many, that means playing video games. We have suites set up with video gaming equipment for recreational therapy. In my opinion, having Wayspots around the campus is just as important for those who may be Niantic gamers.
But since it is difficult to get people to approve wayspots on hospital grounds, I've placed all my submissions outside: therapeutic garden, donor statue, art hanging on an exterior wall (on an inaccessible 7th floor balcony), etc.
The only wayspot we had when I got here was a stop in the roundabout entrance that actually could block ambulances dropping patients off with us (all patients arrive by ambulance from another hospital). However, I flipped that to a gym in 2019 and we've never had any trouble with people blocking access to our facility while using the gym. (I never see any of the portals in use in Ingress.)
I recently even got 1 new wayspot appeal approved on campus by Niantic to give me another one out at the street, near the bus stop.
As someone who spent 5 days in the hospital this summer without access to ANY wayspots, I'm going to make it my mission to add wayspots in hospitals. It sucks to be stuck there and not be able to get your daily spins.
Do people think of a "hospital" as being a single building? Many modern hospitals are complexes with extensive grounds and multiple buildings, only one of which is an emergency department. The grounds can and often do include, as others have noted, gardens, fountains, art, etc. Someone in my area has recently been nominating all kinds of art pieces and historical displays at a large hospital complex and I've been amazed at the extent and quality of art at the grounds. They are absolutely there to be viewed and enjoyed as a semi-public space.
Hospitals have soooooo many things that can be eligible, as @Janetx68-PGO points out. Even if it's just donor plaques! There's a donor plaque outside the bathroom on the floor I work on because someone donated the money to have it redecorated years ago. People love giving money to hospitals and hospitals LOVE displaying those people's names. Keeps donors happy and keeps them pouring money back into the place. One of the POI I got approved was a life-sized statue of a woman who was a multi-year donor to our hospital - like, funded a couple of buildings level donor.
Man, there's definitely some cranky gatekeepers in this thread who lack common sense or have no knowledge of how hospitals work.
I worked as a security guard in a hospital for many years. That hospital had a TINY portion of its floor space dedicated to the ER. There was the ambulance bay driveways, which clearly would have obstructed access - fair, easy denial there. There was the main walk-in door for patients bringing themselves/family into the ER - fair, easy denial for points too. The ICUs were multiple floors above the main, ground-level areas.
Then there were... roughly 17 other accesses into the building that likely wouldn't even be within SIGHT of the ER and/or ICUs. Most of those access points had local art pieces, massive paintings, or historical monuments/displays. Most of them were set up for families to meet and socialize with patients away from the clinical settings. Many of them have references on them specifically calling them "Meeting Point A" so that families could easily communicate and organize where to meet up when they got on site.
Everywhere else in the building was essentially public access which would not restrict or block emergency services in any way, shape, or form. Areas which the public did not have right or access to - secured by swipe cards and/or door locks. We had a chapel (public access 24/7), multiple libraries (public access most hours of the day), huge atriums for dining/family gatherings, family gathering rooms in EVERY UNIT. The percentage of that hospital that was off-limits to the general public was probably in the low 10-20%.
Heck, there was a huge 3-level garden for patient and family access - specifically there for SOCIAL gatherings as modern healthcare is completely aware that is a crucial part of patient care and health.
We had an entire wing of the building for children who are suffering from horrific diseases. We had dozens of rolling carts for video games and toys and other distractions for those kids and their families - kinda like how PoGo is.
Now, as I have grown up and moved on from working there, I have had to spend way too much time in a hospital - if you're not there with a purpose (ie - an employee who is working with a goal), they're horrible places where time ticks by slowly and you're surrounded by **** and misery. It's not a happy place for the most part - healthy, hale, and content people don't generally spend their time there.
If you handed me a top-down map of that hospital, I could blanket it with waypoints, with only a tiny area off limits from the ERs. Standing on the ground floor (since vertical height is irrelevant in the game) would get you access to almost every square foot of that place's footprint, all of which would be publicly accessible without bothering a single emergency personnel. Having worked in another half-dozen hospitals and visiting many more otherwise, I would suggest that's similar across Canada (as I've been in them in at least 4 provinces).
So, to the gatekeepers saying they'll auto-1* a hospital - give your heads a shake. Patients need distractions from the reality of their situations. Family members waiting for the doctor to tell them that their loved one is dead or dying need distractions from that. Recuperating people need things that break up the monotony.
And yes, maybe your country does things differently, but hospitals are public buildings here in Canada at least, where the public has the right to enter and be inside.
Most of this applies in the US as well. My local hospital is a sprawling campus composed of multiple buildings.
Covid changed the public access part. In our hospital you must prove a reason for being there. But that will eventually go back to normal. The main thing is that no one is hanging out at a hospital, not even for a game, if they don’t have to be there. And if they have to be there, a game can make it a little better being there.
Our local hospital used to have several portals, which in pogo was a gym and stops. However management requested removal of the POI across all games - staff were not happy. There are still spawns in PoGo but as you often have to wait around having some POI would add interest. But that’s the way it is.
I've been wondering about this. There's 2 listed buildings at a hospital near me, the buildings arw also part of the hospital, but its more a set of offices/GP's, than actual hospital. I've thought about submitting them but the fact is they are part of the hospital has made me wonder if its worth it or not
These are the 2
I would give them a try as both sound interesting and the listing makes it clear that these are not patient focussed. They might be rejected or you might establish that actually the whole site is blocked. But they might get accepted.
The bottom line is: What does Niantic want in their database?
But NianticGiffard's response included "or interfere with the operations" which could mean about anything. A wayspot of lobby first floor art could be chased on the 8th floor, where there's a surgery room.
Theres a 3rd listed building next to those 2, a clock tower, it's closed off (like, fencing round it and everything) but it's in the game, so I dk t think the area is blocked off. I'll give it a try over the weekend then, can't hurt
My local hospital (Royal United at Bath, UK) has several portals in the grounds. When I had to stay there after my stroke the Doctor treating me even took my phone down to the nearest one to hack it so I could keep my Ingress sojourner.