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In the new Major and Resuscitation room, left to right: Hilary Rankin, Jamie O’May, and Kate Cameron. To buy: c10hos03 |
CAMPBELTOWN Hospital’s new £300,000 casualty department is now up and running.
A former assessment ward and an unused kitchen have been turned into a reception, waiting room and ‘major and resuscitation’ room where serious injuries are treated; three more consulting rooms have been created including one which can be transformed into a ‘place of safety’ for psychiatric patients.
A new, dedicated entrance has been created at the side of the hospital along with bays for three ambulances to deliver patients at the same time if ever there is a large accident.
‘Though I hope we never are that busy,’ said Donnie Cameron, the clinical services manager at Campbeltown Hospital. The main work is completed and the community casualty unit is now open; other works at the hospital are nearly finished, including the refurbishment of the acute ward, a larger kitchen and a cardiac room has been created.
In the x-ray and outpatients department the space is being reorganised to create an extra clinical room. The old casualty department which dates back to the hospital’s opening in 1993 will be turned into two extra rooms for GPs to use and for consulting.
A new CCTV system and panic buttons have been installed to protect the staff and at night time, a double door entry system comes into use.
The major work was commissioned because NHS Highland felt that Kintyre had outgrown the existing accident treatment area.
While the new ambulance bay has taken up nearly seven car parking spaces, an extra 20 have been added on the other side of the hospital by re-landscaping the grounds.
r Nicola Sturgeon MSP, the Scottish Cabinet Secretary for Health and Wellbeing, is due to officially open new department on April 21.
