King's College Hospital
Coordinates: 51 ° 28 ′ 4.8 ″ N , 0 ° 5 ′ 37.6 ″ W.
The King's College Hospital is a hospital in the London Borough of Southwark , which as a central hospital an inner-city population of 700,000 inhabitants in the London districts of Southwark, Lambeth and Lewisham supplies and its medical special facilities are used for health care for millions of people in southern England.
History from the establishment to the Second World War
King's College Hospital originally opened in 1840 in the obsolete St Clements Dane workhouse not far from Lincoln Inn's Field . It served as the training hospital for medical students at King's College London . The area was surrounded by densely populated slums, which were characterized by poverty and a high number of illnesses. Just two years after it opened, the hospital was treating more than 1,290 patients a year and had 120 beds. Due to the small number of beds, it regularly happened that two patients shared a bed. In 1854 there was talk of entrusting Florence Nightingale to the hospital's nurses. Before this could be done, however, Nightingale was hired by the British War Department to lead a group of nurses who were supposed to care for the wounded and sick soldiers of the troops fighting in the Crimean War in the central British military hospital in Scutari ( Selimiye barracks ) . Her nursing school, the Nightingale School of Nursing , was established at St Thomas' Hospital instead of King's College Hospital . From 1861 nurses from a Protestant sorority worked in the hospital, who, unlike at that time, had received basic nursing training. At the suggestion of Florence Nightingale and with the help of the Nightingale Fund, a maternity ward was opened for the first time in King's College in 1861. However, the mortality rate on this ward was high, which is almost certainly due to the fact that this ward was not far from the pathology and that is why there were so many cases of puerperal fever. The maternity ward was therefore closed again in 1868. Joseph Lister , who is considered a pioneer of antiseptic surgery , also belonged to the hospital . He played a key role in ensuring that the surgery at King's College Hospital was ranked among the best in Europe.
In the early years of the 20th century, demographic change meant that increasingly fewer people in central London needed a hospital for their care. After a corresponding parliamentary decision in 1904, the hospital was relocated to its current location south of the Thames. The foundation stone for the new hospital was laid in 1909. In the same year King's College became part of the University of London and the hospital became legally independent. The newly built hospital met the requirements of a contemporary modern building, had an internal telephone system - only the second to be installed in Great Britain - and was able to cover its own electricity needs with diesel generators.
The newly established King's College Hospital Medical School provided clinical training for King's College students. In 1923, the training opportunities at King's College Hospital were expanded to include dentistry. At this point in time, most of the patients belonged to the poorer population and contagious diseases such as tuberculosis dominated the disease cases. In 1937 the building was extended to include the Guthrie wing, which was reserved for private patients and had a lower occupancy rate than the other wards. During the Second World War, mostly those injured in the bombing raids were treated at King's College Hospital. The hospital itself was not hit by aerial bombs.
History since 1945
After the National Health Service was established in 1948, the hospital was selected as one of the teaching hospitals. After a reorganization of the National Health Service in 1974, the hospital became the center of health care in its catchment area. King's College Hospital Medical School was reunited with King's College in 1983 and renamed King's College School of Medicine and Dentistry. A new training center, the Weston Education Center, was completed in 1997 and includes a medical library and rooms suitable for conferences and symposia. In 1998, King's College School of Medicine and Dentistry was merged with the training facilities of Guy's Hospital and St Thomas' Hospital to form Guy's, King's and St Thomas's School of Medicine. In 2002 the Golden Jubilee Wing was completed, in which outpatients are treated and in which speech and occupational therapy facilities as well as physiotherapy are housed.
King's College Hospital specializes in transplant medicine , among other things , and is one of the world's largest centers for liver transplantation . Another focus is the treatment of Parkinson's sufferers .
Single receipts
- ↑ Barbara Montgomer Dossey: Florence Nightingale - Mystic, Visionary, Healer. Springhouse Corporation, Springhouse 2000, ISBN 0-87434-984-2 , p. 96.
- ↑ Mark Bostridge: Florence Nightingale . Penguin Books, London 2009, ISBN 978-0-14-026392-3 , p. 428 and p. 429.
- ↑ Mark Bostridge: Florence Nightingale . Penguin Books, London 2009, ISBN 978-0-14-026392-3 , p. 430.