Emergency Department

The Emergency Department (ED) at Medway Hospital is open 24 hours a day, every day, for the treatment of serious and life-threatening illnesses and injuries for all adults and children of any age. As well as being a Trauma Unit, we have specialist services within the Department, and within the Hospital, to care for patients.

If you attend our ED you will be met on arrival by an experienced Nurse or Doctor who will assess your immediate healthcare needs. This will help decide if you need to be seen by a specialist Emergency Medicine Doctor or an Emergency Nurse Practitioner, or if you can be seen elsewhere by a GP, pharmacist, or other healthcare provider. If your problem can be dealt with outside of the Emergency Department, you will be redirected. There is a GP service on-site, open 24 hours a day, every day, if you do not require ED care but are not able to see your own GP.

If you are seriously ill or injured, you may be brought to the ED by an Emergency Ambulance. The ambulance service will have alerted us to your situation, so that we can prepare for your arrival. If you attend by any other means, including by ambulance (where the ambulance service has not deemed you in need of immediate attention), you will be assessed on arrival as described above ‘if you do not require immediate care, you would be expected to be seen in time order which can be impacted by the complexity of the needs of patients ahead of you.

The ED is mapped out into areas to meet specific care needs of our patients:

1. The Resuscitation room for severely unwell and Trauma patients requiring resuscitation.
2.  Majors’ area for severe to moderately unwell patients not requiring resuscitation.
3.  Areas 1-3 for mildly unwell patients and minor injuries.
4. Children’s Emergency area that attends to children and young people to the age of 17 years.

Each area has its own separate waiting area. The waiting time will differ in each area and dependent on clinical need.

The waiting areas are designed to be separate from the clinical areas to maintain privacy for patients and their carers.

The current ED is an expansion on the old structure, this new structure can process over 120,000 patients a year in line with the increasing number of patients utilising the ED.