SW Thames Prospectus - South Thames Diabetes and Endocrinology

Within this main area, the Trust serves approximately 650,000 people. It
also provides medical care for a wider population, particularly for certain
specialist services.
The busy Accident and Emergency department deals with 80,000
attendances per annum. The South West Thames Renal Medicine and
Transplantation Service is based at St Helier Hospital and, together with its
satellite services, it provides a full nephrology service including
transplantation for a renal population of 2 million in London, Surrey and
Sussex Borders. St Helier Hospital has a full range of outpatient facilities
and a comprehensive range of diagnostic facilities (including MRI and CT
scanning, nuclear medicine, ultrasound and vascular diagnostic services).
St Helier Hospital is an Associated Teaching Hospital and the main partner
Teaching Hospital to St George’s University of London. Medical students on
the 5 year MB BS course and the 4 year Graduate Entry Programme are
taught here throughout the year. There is an Undergraduate Centre with
an Undergraduate Sub-Dean, Clinical Teaching Fellows and Undergraduate
Administrator and a purpose-built Multi-Professional Teaching Centre for
clinical teaching including communication skills. The hospital has a wellequipped
Post-graduate Medical Centre with audio-visual links to the
Postgraduate Centre at Epsom Hospital. There is a full programme of
postgraduate activities including weekly Grand Rounds, lunchtime lectures
and specialist/departmental meetings and there are educational
programmes for doctors in training.
General Medicine
The Trust has approximately 250 beds for Medicine and Elderly. There is an
HDU, ITU and CCU at St Helier Hospital. HDU and ITU are run by Intensive
Care physicians with input from the patient’s admitting medical team and
there are daily ward rounds which are led by the ITU team. Patients in CCU
remain under the care of their admitting medical teams but there are also
daily cardiologist-led ward rounds. There is also a Consultant-led Stroke
Unit, which has its own permanent staff. There is excellent out-of-hours
laboratory support and 24 hour availability of emergency radiology. There is
also an emergency endoscopy service for acute GI bleeding.
Physicians are grouped into 4 medical teams for acute medical takes.
Specialist Registrars work a full-shift system and are on-call on a 1 in 9 basis.
Day shifts are from 9.00 am to 9.00 pm and night shifts from 9.00 pm to 9.00
am. Weeks of night duty are split into blocks of 4 and 3 nights.
There are both medical and surgical assessment units (MAU and SAU). The
MAU is run by a full-time Consultant in Acute Medicine and his team with
whom the admitting medical team work closely. There are post-take ward
rounds at the end of each 12-hour period and these are led by the on-call
Consultant of the day. If patients are admitted they are transferred from the
MAU to the short-stay medical ward and if they require more than 48 hours
in hospital they are then moved to the appropriate Team’s beds. There are
usually 15-20 admissions in 24 hours.
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