Acute Admissions Unit

The Wellington Hospital Acute Admissions Unit (AAU) has the ability to admit admit very ill and complex unplanned admissions 24/7 and care for them around the clock. Our AAU allows GPs and consultants to access inpatient facilities for patients in need of acute medical or surgical care, quickly and smoothly.

Located on the ground floor of our South Building, of the ten rooms available in our AAU, six are fitted out to ITU standards. There is a resident intensivist with on call anaesthetist, interventional radiologist and physicians available. This means patients in need of urgent, high dependency or intensive care can benefit from rapid specialist care on admission, without having to be moved to another ward.

With dedicated on-site staff including a resident doctor trained to registrar level or beyond and 24-hour access to consultants from a range of specialties, the AAU offers rapid assessment and treatment for acute and complex needs via a GP or consultant referral.

Our consultants treat and care for the full range of acute conditions, from the more common to the complex:

Already specialists at senior registrar level within the NHS, our Resident Doctors are individually chosen to offer our patients 24-hour on-site care, while completing their PhD or NHS research. Consultant physician and clinical lead of the AAU, Dr Michael Fertleman, explains:

"At The Wellington only experienced, post-graduate doctors can work in our hospital as a registrar. This means that, even when a consultant is off site or in theatre, there is a highly qualified medical doctor on site to care for your patients."

The hospital has a 24-hour rota of physicians, surgeons and specialist nurses, who are available, seven days a week.

Through the establishment of a 24-hour consultant rota, he has ensured there is always at least one consultant available in a range of fields such as medicine, orthopaedics, neurology, to tend to patients across the hospital.

“Ensuring we always have a consultant available means the hospital can carry out very complex surgery. If a patient develops a gynaecological problem while recovering from a hip replacement, or needs cardiac care after spinal surgery, our 24-hour consultant rota enables us to respond very quickly to the patients needs.”

There are many increased precautions in place for the safety of our patients and colleagues. The AAU at The Wellington Hospital is open and admitting acute medical and surgical admissions each and every day, like it always has. We have a long, established heritage in providing complex care which has meant the infrastructure to ensure the utmost safety for patients was largely in place before this pandemic. Nonetheless we have reconfigured our AAU to ensure we can go above and beyond national and international safety guidelines.

The following are a few of the many safety measures implemented within the AAU: