Bedford Hospital
Bedford Hospital is a District General Hospital located in the English town of Bedford, serving north and mid Bedfordshire. It is run by Bedford Hospital NHS Trust.
South Wing
Bedford Hospital is mainly situated at the so-called South Wing site, which is home to the Accident and Emergency department, theatres, pathology, inpatient wards, x-ray department, oncology services and the outpatients services. South Wing houses BEDOC, Bedford Primary Care Trust's GP out-of-hours emergency service.
Recent developments on the South Wing site include:
- Cygnet Wing (1996), a paediatric, maternity and gynaecology building
- A new critical care complex (2002)
- The Macmillian Primrose Centre (2003), an oncology centre funded entirely by charitable donations from local people
- Beeden House (2005), which hosts a cardiology suite
- A new £7m pathology building(2005)
Wards at South Wing include:
- Gifford Nash - medical, for elderly female patients.
- John Bunyan - 16 beds, for elderly female patients.
- Meadowbank - 14 cots, special care baby unit (SCBU) at Cygnet Wing
- Pilgrim
- Reginald Hart - 14 beds female trauma and orthopaedic
- Richard Wells - medical respiratory ward
- Robertson - 16 beds, for female patients undergoing major gynaecological or breast surgery
- Shand - 34 beds, mixed surgical ward, specialising in vascular surgery
- Shuttleworth - 33 beds, mixed surgical, specialises in colorectal and gastrointestinal surgery
- Victoria - 16 beds, for stroke patients.
North Wing
Some services are based at North Wing, two miles north of South Wing, including occupational therapy, physiotherapy and rehabilitation facilities, as well as a chest clinic and a drop-in dental service. For many years, North Wing housed the hospital's maternity ward, but this was relocated to South Wing when Cygnet Wing was opened in 1996.
Psychiatric services
Weller Wing, the main psychiatric hospital serving the area, is also based on the South Wing site, although it is run by a separate organisation, Bedfordshire and Luton Mental Health and Social Care Partnership NHS Trust.
Wards:
- Keats - 24 beds, acute adult psychiatry
- Brontë - 18 beds, acute adult psychiatry
- Chaucer - 15 beds, old-age psychiatry
- Milton - 15 beds, old-age psychiatry - dementia and other organic illnesses
- Sheridan Day Hospital - 15 places per day, for over 65s
Mortuary scandal
In 2001, it was reported in a local newspaper (and later, in the national press) that bodies were being stored on the floor of the chapel of rest, as part of the hospital's mortuary was undergoing maintenance. Photographs of the bodies were printed in newspapers and shown on TV, to the outrage of some relatives of the deceased. An inquiry found the hospital's management at fault, and the Chief Executive subsequently resigned.
For several months, refrigerated trucks were used as temporary mortuaries to avoid further inappropriate storage of dead bodies. The situation is now resolved, as the new pathology building houses a larger mortuary.
References
- "Hospital chapel used as mortuary for years". BBC News online. January 31, 2001.