Ninewells Hospital

History

The proposal for the new hospital was put forward in May 1960 and final permission was accepted by Parliament in February 1962. The first phase of the project was due to take 6 years at a cost of £9 million. Designed by Robert Matthew Johnson-Marshall and partners, the protracted construction began in August 1964. The hospital was initially designed to hold 800 beds, and the ward units were planned on the 'race track' principle. The foundation stone was laid on 9 September 1965, by Baron Hughes of Hawkhill. The infirmary was built onto the side of a hill and the practicalities of the design were influenced by airport check in. Phase I of the building was completed in 1973, although some sections were not finished until 1975. The final cost was estimated as £25 million. Hospital admittances started on 31 January 1974 and the hospital was officially opened by the Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother on 23 October 1974. At the opening ceremony, she stated "nothing that science can devise, nor money provide, will be lacking for the treatment of the patients".

By 1986 the hospital employed over 5,000 people and had 830 beds over 39 wards. At that time, the total annual cost of patient care was said to be £22 million.

The opening of Ninewells had a major impact upon Dundee's existing hospitals. Dundee Royal Infirmary, opened in 1798, moving to larger premises in the 1850s, had been Dundee's main hospital until the opening of Ninewells. From 1974 many of its functions and responsibilities were transferred to Ninewells and the infirmary ultimately closed in 1998. Maryfield Hospital, which had formerly been the East Poorhouse, was closed to patients in stages between 1974 and 1976 as a result of Ninewells opening. In the 1990s and 2000s many functions of the city's King's Cross Hospital were also transferred to Ninewells. In 2001 a new psychiatric unit opened in the grounds of the hospital taking over some of the functions of Royal Dundee Liff Hospital.

Ten million pounds has been spent redesigning and overhauling the paediatric department of the hospital and, in June 2006, it was officially opened under the name Tayside Children's Hospital.

The archives of the hospital are held by Archive Services, University of Dundee. The same archive also has a collection of microfilm copies of plans and documents relating to the construction of the hospital by Robert Matthew Johnson-Marshall & Partners.

The modern hospital

As of March 2014 the hospital has 862 staffed beds, including a 31-bed medical assessment unit. The hospital has two MRI scanners and a CT scanner available, which can be operated 24 hours a day, including weekends. The hospital provides services in accident and emergency, critical care, lung and colorectal cancer, palliative care and most medical and surgical specialties. The hospital has a team of anaesthetists on site 24 hours a day, and there are always at least two registered children's nurses on duty 24 hours a day in each children's ward. At the Maternity Unit in Ninewells, all newborn babies now have their hearing tested, with a dedicated hearing screener who carries out the tests to discover any problems as soon as possible after the baby is born.

The Accident and Emergency Department deals with 150,000 admissions – including 3,500 broken bones, 250 heart attacks and 20,000 X-rays.The department is the Regional Major Trauma Centre for Tayside and Fife, operating 24 hours a day this centre will accept any trauma cases from miles around with patients arriving by walk-in,land ambulance or by air ambulance landing on the hospital's state of the art helipad. The Tayside Pre-hospital Trauma Team operate from the emergency department providing on-scene critical care for the most seriously injured patients in east of Scotland From 2016 The hospital will be one of 4 major trauma centres where specialist services are based as part of a new national major trauma network in Scotland.

In addition to the hospital, there is a teaching section that includes the Ninewells medical school and the nursing school of University of Dundee. As such it was the second purpose built medical school in UK, and has garnered a reputation for excellence in academic research. In particular the hospital has one of the world's leading leukaemia research units.

Ninewells was the largest hospital in Scotland until the opening of Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow.

Tayside Children's Hospital

Tayside Children's Hospital is a children's hospital located within Ninewells Hospital. It serves children, age from birth up until their fourteenth birthday, who live in Dundee, Angus, Perth and Kinross and north east Fife and, as such, it was so named after a region rather than a city to reflect the wide area that it covers.

The facility, which cost ten million pounds to fund, was formally opened on 7 June 2006 in a ceremony involving television celebrity Fred MacAulay, University of Dundee principal Sir Alan Langlands, nurses, doctors and young patients. The hospital combines medical services for children aged from prenatal to fourteen years of age with research departments specialising in paediatrics, and was financed by NHS and Dundee University funds and with money raised by various children's charity organisations. The major driver behind TICH was the professor of Child Health Richard Olver, who spent a considerable period of his latter years in post campaigning for funds from charities and the public sector.

Included within the hospital are Ward 29 (the children's medical ward), Ward 30 (the children's surgical ward), Ward 40 (the neonatal unit), a high dependency unit, the maternity department, children's surgical rooms, a children's outpatient clinic, an ambulatory bay and a Maternal and Child Health clinic. There are also an outdoor play area/garden and an indoor play centre, which also houses an area that provides entertainment equipment aimed specifically at adolescents, as well as Ronald McDonald suites for families to reside in while their child is hospitalised. Clinical research into conditions such as cystic fibrosis, asthma, diabetes, prematurity, etc. is conducted at the unit in the hopes of developing further treatments and better enable medication trials that would normally only be offered to adults.

The idea of a children's hospital in Dundee had been considered since 1995 but, although the children's wards underwent major upgrading,

Maggie's Dundee

On the Ninewells site there is also a Maggie's Centre building, intended as a calming and accommodating place to support patients and their families. The building was designed by architect Frank Gehry, in conjunction with James F Stephen. It occupies a hilltop position which enhances the building’s sculptural form when viewed from the approach road. The structure was the first new-build commissioned by the cancer support organisation. It was officially opened on 25 September 2003 by Bob Geldof. Maggie's Dundee was named as the Royal Fine Art Commission's building of the year in 2004.

A garden with a labyrinth design by Arabella Lennox-Boyd and other landscaped features were added in 2008. In the first ten years, around 100,000 people had passed through its doors.

Ninewells Cancer Campaign

The Ninewells Cancer Campaign was set up in 1990 following a successful CAT Scan fundraising appeal. The campaign was founded by Dr Pat McPherson who worked closely with Dr Jacqui Wood, who chaired the campaign from 1991, until her own death from cancer in 2011. She was succeeded as chair by Lady Fiona Fraser. Collaboration between the Ninewells Cancer Campaign and DC Thomson led to the use of Dennis the Menace as the campaign's mascot, with the slogan "Help Dennis Beat the Menace". The campaign has raised over £17 million to fund equipment and research into cancer. The campaign successfully raised £2 million to fund the creation and equipping of the Jacqui Wood Cancer Centre, a research centre established at the University of Dundee's Medical School at the hospital. The campaign continues to raise funds to support the research work being undertaken at the centre.