Clinical Activities
The Department of Medicine offers a full range of clinical
services, spanning all the subdisciplines of internal medicine, to
patients attending public health services in Cape Town, as well as
specialist and superspecialist consultation for all patients in the
Western Cape and, in the case of areas of special expertise,
nationally and internationally as well.
Together with the Faculty of Health Sciences of the University of Stellenbosch, we share responsibility for the secondary and tertiary care of a population of approximately 3 million. We provide a clinical service in internal medicine at four district hospitals: GF Jooste Hospital in Manenberg, Somerset Hospital in Green Point, Victoria Hospital and 2 Military Hospital in Wynberg. These are busy hospitals providing medical services to a large population in Cape Town, and serve as referral hospitals for the community health centres in greater Cape Town. Our registrars rotate through these hospitals, working alongside the hospitals' own medical officers.
Tertiary Services
Groote Schuur
Hospital is our main teaching hospital. This is a large institution,
established in its present site in 1938. The Department is
responsible for the staffing and operation of a busy Emergency Unit,
which serves largely as receiving area for referrals from our
district hospitals. Patients are admitted from here into an
emergency ward for short term stay, or transferred directly to our
medical wards or to medical beds staff by our subspecialist
divisions. Facilities staffed by our department include the Coronary
Care Unit, Stroke Unit and Respiratory Intensive Care Unit.
Approximately 60 beds in Groote Schuur Hospital fall under our Acute
General Medicine division. Since most patients with less complex
illnesses are now managed in our district hospitals, these beds are
largely filled by patients with highly complex conditions requiring
of multidisciplinary intervention, subspecialist supervision or
complex investigations and treatment.
Subspecialist Services
Our
department offers a full range of subspecialist services to the
population of Cape Town and Western Province and, in some cases, to
patients from the rest of South Africa and other southern African
states. These include cardiac electrophysiology, interventional
cardiology assessment for cardiac surgery and cardiac
transplantation, management of complex arrhythmias,
gastro-intestinal endoscopy, the monitoring and management of
resistant hypertension, liver transplantation, renal dialysis and
transplantation, intensive care in our coronary and respiratory
intensive care units, a dedicated stroke unit, assessment for the
surgical management of epilepsy and bronchoscopy. These services are
described in more detail under our individual divisions
Specialised hospitals
We also have registrars more rotating through the II Military Hospital in Wynberg and the Brooklyn Chest Hospital. Our consultants visit the Brooklyn Chest Hospital and the Brewelskloof Hospital in Worcester regularly, provide consultant services for patients with tuberculosis. The Division of Hepatology supervises liver transplantation services at the Red Cross War Memorial Children's Hospital.
UCT Private Academic Hospital
The University of Cape Town opened its own
Private Hospital in partnership with the private sector. This
hospital-within-a-hospital is situated on the D Floor of Groote
Schuur Hospital but functions as an entirely separate administrative
institution. It provides medical services to patients contracted to
several large medical insurance companies. Medical services are
provided by our consultant staff.
Consultation services
Most of our clinical divisions and their consultant staff are involved in outreach programmes, travelling to other centres (particularly the Eastern Cape: Mthatha, Port Elizabeth, East London, and George) to provide subspecialist consultation services. We also offer clinical support at the primary care level at certain community health centres, particularly at the Khayelitsha Community Health Centre and rheumatological consultation at the Atlantis Community Health Centre.
Private practice
While most of our consultant staff are in full-time employment with the provincial administration of the Western Cape, some participate in limited private practice and may be consulted privately. Details are available under our individual divisions.
