General medicine service
The Acute and General Medicine provides acute medical services or general medicine service for adults of all ages across a wide range of specialties and is part of the integrated therapies and medicine directorate.
Most of our general medicine patients are admitted through accident and emergency (A&E). Only 2% of our general medicine admissions are planned.
Admissions from A&E generally go the Admissions Ward. Here, patients are reviewed by a team of doctors, nurses and therapists. Some patients may be discharged home the same or following day (often with rapid outpatient follow-up and your appointment may be either at Guy’s Hospital or St Thomas’ Hospital), whereas other patients may need to stay for a few days or longer.
If you need to stay in hospital you will be transferred to one of our general medical wards at St Thomas' Hospital or to a specialty ward either at St Thomas' or Guy's Hospital.
There are many medical conditions that when you are first admitted to hospital are often looked after by the general medicine team, such as sickle cell disease, HIV/AIDS, infectious diseases, rheumatology and neurology.
If you have a condition usually managed by a different specialty or we diagnose something that should be managed by a specialty team, we will contact the team to discuss taking over your care whilst you are in hospital (or in outpatients when you are discharged).
If the specialty team agrees to take over your care and you need to remain in hospital, we will arrange for you to be transferred to a bed managed by that team. There may be a delay in transferring you if no beds are available. Where there is a delay, we will ask the specialty team to review you whilst you remain in one of our beds to ensure that you get the appropriate care that you need.
If you need to stay in hospital for more than a day or two then you will either be transferred to one of our general medical wards at St Thomas' Hospital or to a specialty ward either at St Thomas' Hospital or Guy's Hospital if this is more appropriate.
The general medicine outpatient team work on both sites providing care to patients with a range of conditions including hypertension, stroke prevention and falls whilst also covering general medicine.
Wards for general medicine:
- Admissions Ward
- Albert Ward
- Hillyers Ward
- William Gull Ward
