At Stanley, all crisis care to soon be under one roof

Work on the six-storey building is nearing completion, and the PWD will hand it over to the hospital by the end of this month

A new building at the government hospital will have state-of-the-art facilities to deal with emergencies and trauma care — Photo: B. Jothi Ramalingam

A new multi-storey block at Government Stanley Hospital will house all emergency and trauma care facilities under one roof, making it the hospital’s crisis centre.

Work on the six-storey building is nearing completion, and the Public Works Department (PWD) will hand it over to the hospital by the end of this month, officials said.

Construction work for the block had begun in March 2010.

“The hospital caters to a large population in north Chennai. When the building opens, it will boost emergency and trauma care as it will have state-of-the-art facilities, including zero-delay wards, operation theatres and postoperative wards, all under one roof,” said hospital dean S. Geethalakshmi.

At present, patients who come to the emergency ward need to be shifted to the central operation theatre, located in another block.

On any given day, the hospital receives around 8,000 outpatients from neighbourhoods across north Chennai as well as from Tiruvallur district.

The last building constructed at the hospital was a surgery block in the mid-1980s, Dr. Geethalakshmi added.

The built-in area of the new block is 2, 25,114 square feet, and it has come up at a cost of nearly Rs. 45 crore.

The ground floor will consist of a trauma ward, zero-delay wards, a casualty operation theatre and a radiology department, while the first floor will accommodate the intermediate care unit, an inter-respiratory care unit, orthopaedic post-operative wards and an emergency operation theatre. Orthopaedic wards and an orthopaedic operation theatre will come up on the second floor.

The remaining four floors will house a cardiology intensive care unit, a cath lab, cardiology wards, a nephrology ward, a nephrology post-operative ward, a dialysis ward, neurology wards and medical wards.

PWD officials said the H-shaped building has four wings, each housing two 15-bed wards. Each floor will have 20 toilets and 16 bathrooms for patients’ use. There are a total of nine operation theatres, with space to accommodate 11 operation tables each. These will add to the existing 40 operation tables at the hospital.

Dr. Geethalakshmi said the block will have an exclusive operation theatre for kidney transplant procedures.

A special feature of the block is the access doors to prevent unauthorised entry into the intensive care wards, she said.