Emergency Department

The Emergency Department or ED is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Some of our patients are referred by local doctors, some by ambulance and some arrive in the department without a doctor referral as they believe they have an urgent health care problem.

People that arrive in ED have care provided for them in order of their urgency, or seriousness of their illness or injury. The triage nurse who will most likely see you first will make an assessment to identify how urgently you need to be seen, based on your symptoms and your problem. They use a triage tool to determine your urgency. There are 5 triage codes with the most urgent being triage code 1.

There is a team of dedicated and experienced nurses, doctors, receptionists and health assistants that will assess you, provide pain relief, investigations and treat your problem. You may then be discharged home or referred to a specialty team for further assessment, treatment and perhaps admission into hospital.

If you are discharged you will be provided with a follow-up appointment with a specialty team or advised to return to your family doctor for review. A copy of your discharge summary will be sent to your family doctor and/or the health professional that referred you to the ED.

Sometimes you need to wait for your care in ED, and this is mostly because there are sick patients that need more urgent care. Sometimes you may have to wait for results of your investigations or to have other investigations to enable you to be safely and comfortably discharged back to the care of your family doctor.