Emergency department
We are open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year for the treatment of serious and potentially life threatening conditions.
Important: Improving your Emergency Department
We're investing in our Emergency Department to deliver faster care and a better experience for patients. The department will remain open throughout and we apologise for any disruption caused while these improvements take place.
Waiting times
Emergency deparments have become busier, resulting in long waits for assessment, and for admission. We try to see everyone as quickly as we can. Unfortunately when workload is high in resus, the ambulance areas and the paediatric department we have to move doctors to these areas.
We aim to see all patients and get them discharged or transferred to a ward within four hours of patients arriving in the emergency department.
About the emergency department
Routes to the emergency department
Patients come to the emergency department from:
- GP’s – some patients are referred direct to speciality teams
- Walk-in self referrals, or advised to come by 111
- Ambulances
- Specialty clinics – for admission
- Other hospitals – for admission or specialty review
- The wait times for specialties varies depending upon their workload elsewhere in the hospital
- If you are waiting to see a specialty team you may be seen more quickly than an emergency department patient, or more slowly. This is one reason why some patients in the waiting room wait longer than others who arrived after them.