Wards were once the norm in Western hospitals, but have been abandoned due to infection control. Modern hospitals have separate inpatient wards for different medical specialties, as well as specialized units for intensive care and psychiatry. Some facilities combine outpatient care with inpatient care for long-term rehabilitation patients.
Two or more generations ago, most patients in Western hospitals were housed and treated in large, long rooms known as wards. There were very few private rooms, used only in special circumstances. The wards were segregated by gender and grew to be segregated by the treating physician’s medical specialty, such as surgery or obstetrics. A hospital ward required fewer staff members to care for an equivalent patient population housed in private or double rooms. The general use of a hospital ward has been abandoned in the interest of better infection control, although the term lives on to mean a separate patient population.
Modern Western hospitals often place a separate inpatient ward on each floor, or half floor, of their facilities. Examples of hospital wards include general medicine wards, surgical wards, orthopedics, obstetrics, and pediatrics. Depending on their size and philosophies, some hospitals subdivide departments further by offering telemetry – outpatient cardiac monitoring – floors, oncology departments, and even women’s health departments covering breast, reproductive issues, and reproductive organ surgery. The psychiatric floors are not only reserved for visitors and residents, but are also separated according to whether they are adult or adolescent patients. Intensive Care Units (ICUs), Coronary Care Units (CCUs), and Neurological Intensive Care Units (NICUs) are all a type of highly specialized hospital ward that is physically separated from general hospital traffic and limited to healthcare personnel except that visits for limited times.
Different but related types of wards are often located on the same floor, adjacent to each other, or otherwise very close to each other. This proximity can be for patient and family convenience – such as the nursery and new mother obstetrics departments – or for patient assessment efficiency, such as the radiology department which is often located next to the emergency room. Some facilities have set up “unit pharmacies” or a dedicated pharmacy and staff for each specialized hospital department to expedite the delivery of newly prescribed medicines to patients. Another example of increasing hospital ward efficiency is the recent placement of physical therapy suites within rehabilitation wards or orthopedic units.
Some facilities have begun to combine outpatient care of discharged patients with patients who remain in the inpatient ward. This type of combination therapy is typically used with patient populations experiencing a long and difficult rehabilitation process, such as neurological injuries or substance abuse problems. The return of discharged patients to their former wards and co-patients is believed to provide encouragement and incentives for recovery for both patient populations.
Protect your devices with Threat Protection by NordVPN
