What is hospital

HOSPITAL

1. 
   What is hospital
   
2. 
   Functions
   
3. 
   Types
   

Hospital is a medical institution where in-patients are treated. There are general hospitals and specialized ones such as infection hospitals, children’s hospitals, mental, oncological, emergency and other hospitals and clinics. Babies are born in maternity homes. Urgent medical aid is provided by the physicians and resuscitation specialists of the first-aid ambulance centres.

Each general hospital has several departments. There are surgical, therapeutic, cardiac, neurology, burns and other departments. Medical staff of the hospital consists of a head doctor, therapeautists, surgeons, neurologists, ENT-specialists, cardiologists, gynecologists, psychiatrics, oncologists and other specialists. Nursing staff consists of doctors’ assistants and nurses.

Medical Academy has some clinical chairs on the hospital grounds. The medical students study here under the guidance of professors, associate professors and assistants.

When the patient is admitted to the hospital he is taken to the reception ward. After a preliminary examination the patient is directed to a certain department. There are several wards, doctors’ and nurses’ rooms, a medical treatment room, a dining-room, a sterilizing- and a bath-rooms, toilets in each department.

Every day the doctors make the morning rounds. The doctor in charge examines the patient, listens to the heart and lungs, takes blood pressure, palpates the abdomen etc. Then the doctor fills in a case-history and gives instructions to the nurse as to the treatment of the patients.

Nurses carry out doctors’ assignments: they make injections, take the patients' temperature, feel the pulse, put bandages, apply compress etc. They also sterilize instruments and prepare everything for the operations. Operations are performed in the surgery block. It's equipped with an operating table, a shadowless lamp, an apparatus for anesthesia, blood transfusion.

Every hospital has its laboratory for making analyses. Laboratory assistants make blood, urine and other analyses.

When the doctors see a marked improvement in patients’ con dition they can discharge them from the hospital.

Currently, hospitals are largely staffed by professional physicians, surgeons, nurses, and allied health practitioners, whereas in the past, this work was usually performed by the members of founding religious orders or by volunteers. However, there are various Catholic religious orders, such as the Alexians and the Bon Secours Sisters that still focus on hospital ministry in the late 1990s, as well as several other Christian denominations, including the Methodists and Lutherans, which run hospitals.[4] In accordance with the original meaning of the word, hospitals were original "places of hospitality", and this meaning is still preserved in the names of some institutions such as the Royal Hospital Chelsea, established in 1681 as a retirement and nursing home for veteran soldiers.