UCT Medical School -Anaesthesia & Perioperative Medicine ( Paediatric Anaesthesia )

UCT Medical School -Anaesthesia & Perioperative Medicine ( Paediatric Anaesthesia )

UCT Medical School -Anaesthesia & Perioperative Medicine ( Paediatric Anaesthesia )

Red Cross War Memorial Children’s Hospital is a tertiary pediatric hospital based in Cape Town, South Africa.  The hospital was originally built as a memorial to soldiers lost in the Second World War.  Since it first opened its doors in 1956, it has provided specialist care for children from all over South Africa and continues to receive referrals for tertiary pediatric services from other African countries.

The division of pediatric anesthesia is extremely busy, with approximately 10,000 anesthetics performed annually.  Training in Paediatric Anaesthesia is offered across many specialties including; cardiothoracic, liver transplantation, burns, neurosurgery, general surgery, orthopedics, ophthalmology, ENT, urology, plastics, and pediatric sedation.  In addition, we offer training opportunities for supernumerary fellows from within South Africa and overseas.

The hospital has 8 main operating theatres, a day surgery theatre, and a trauma theatre. In addition, the department also provides a service for radiology, cardiology, radiotherapy, chronic pain, and additional operating lists at Maitland Cottage, where the majority of elective pediatric orthopedic surgery is performed.

There are currently 6 pediatric anesthetists based permanently at Red Cross War Memorial Children’s Hospital, and in addition, there are up to 3 rotating consultants and 7 registrars from the UCT Department of Anesthesia. The Department is one of two MEPA Centres in Africa and holds regular simulation-based training workshops in pediatric anesthesia.

The Division of General Internal Medicine

The traditional “hub” of the Department of Medicine, General Internal Medicine, spans four hospitals: Groote Schuur Hospital and its neighboring Regional/Large District Hospitals, New Somerset Hospital, Mitchells Plain Hospital, and Victoria Hospital, which offer specialized care in the Metro West of Cape Town. Five hours distant, George Hospital is a community hospital that also provides clinical services and training.

As a result, General Internal Medicine receives the majority of the in-patient beds in the medical field. It also serves as the foundation for the majority of the department’s clinical work and serves as the setting for much of the bedside undergraduate and graduate instruction.

Clinical Service

Acute Care (in-patient service), Consultation Care (for in-patients in hospitals), Outpatient Care (for patients with complicated multi-system demands or as a diagnostic consultation service), and Outreach to Primary Care are the main areas of focus for General Internal Medicine. The platform’s general practitioners play key roles in clinical governance in their various geographic regions in addition to striving for excellence in clinical care at the level of the individual patient.

Central tenets of the service include a focus on quality and safety of care as well as equitable access to specialist and subspecialist care for the population of the Metro West of Cape Town and George.

Teaching

The Division offers a setting for medical school bedside teaching. The Division’s consultants all hold teaching and examining positions at the undergraduate and graduate levels for the University, and several of them also serve as external and college test examiners. All UCT undergraduate students will spend some time on the wards, and all internal medicine registrars will spend more than half of their training period practicing acute medicine as the “medical registrar on intake” while cycling across all the hospitals. (For further information, please refer to the “teaching” section of the Department website under “registrar training program”).

The Division has also piloted a scheme of additional training for general specialists post-registrar training,

Research

Typical areas of research related to clinical audits of processes, outcomes, and care pathways in acute care and palliative care. Individuals in the Division are also active in research in their own interest areas outside of general medicine. The bed platform provides for the recruitment of many patients to “organ–specific” trials of members of the Department.

Staff Members:

Every hospital is headed by a local Head of Department, on the dual contract of employment with the Provincial Public Service and UCT.

Head of Department, New Somerset Hospital: Dr Yakoob Vallie

Head of Department, Mitchells Plein Hospital: Dr. Tom Crede

Head of Department, Victoria Hospital: Dr. Nasief van der Schyff

Head of Department, George Hospital: Dr Trevor Gould

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