Hospital type Teaching Closed June 2015 Number of beds 266 Affiliated university University of Glasgow | Emergency department Yes Phone +44 141 201 0000 Founded 1882 Care system NHS Scotland | |
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Location Yorkhill, Glasgow, Scotland Speciality Children's hospital
Neonatology Address 1345 Govan Rd, Glasgow G51 4TF, UK | ||
The Royal Hospital for Sick Children was an NHS Scotland hospital in Yorkhill, Glasgow, specialising in paediatric healthcare. It was commonly referred to simply as Yorkhill or "Sick Kids". The hospital provided care for newborn babies right up to children around 13 years of age, including a specialist Accident and Emergency facility and the only Donor Milk Banking facility in Scotland. The hospital closed in June 2015, with services transferring to the Royal Hospital for Children, Glasgow, one of the hospitals build on the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital campus on the Southside of the city. The hospital building at Yorkhill has since reopened as the West Glasgow Ambulatory Care Hospital.
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History
The hospital was originally completed at Garnethill in 1882 and opened on 20 December as the Hospital for Sick Children. It took almost 22 years to come to fruition due to a dispute with the University of Glasgow regarding a suitable site.
When opened, the hospital had 58 beds. It was funded by charitable donations. On 8 January 1883, the hospital admitted its first patient, a 5-year-old boy with curvature of the spine. A further 16 beds were added in 1887 when Thomas Carlyle converted a house next door into an annexe. The hospital was given Royal patronage in 1889 when the prefix was added to its title.
The hospital was suffering from a chronic lack of space by the 1900s and as a result a new site at Yorkhill was chosen for the replacement hospital building. Designed by John James Burnet, the new building opened in July 1914. A public appeal had raised almost £140,000 in order for the Yorkhill site to be able to open.
On 11 July 1964, the Queen Mother's Maternity Hospital opened on a site adjacent to the Royal Hospital for Sick Children. In 1966, the Royal Hospital for Sick Children was temporarily relocated to the former Oakbank Hospital buildings in Maryhill in order to facilitate the demolition of the existing building, which was discovered to be suffering from severe structural defects. The new Royal Hospital for Sick Children building was reopened at Yorkhill by Queen Elizabeth II in 1972 and coupled with the Queen Mother's Maternity Hospital, effectively established a national centre of integrated Obstetrics and Paediatric healthcare.
A new operating theatre complex opened in 1998 and a new Intensive Care Unit opened in April 2005.
By 2008 the Hospital had 266 inpatient beds, 12 daycase beds, and each year handled approximately 90,000 out-patients, 15,000 in-patients and 7,300 day cases.
Replacement
NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde closed the Queen Mother's Maternity Hospital on 13 January 2010 and plan to re-locate the Royal Hospital for Sick Children to the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital site in Govan where it is planned to open in June 2015. The new £100 million, 256 bed, Royal Hospital for Sick Children will be integrated with the refurbished Maternity unit at the Southern General Hospital as well as a new 1109 bed Adult Hospital and the existing specialist Institute of Neurological Sciences. The hospital closed on 10 June 2015, with services transferring to the new Royal Hospital for Children, Glasgow.
The hospital building reopened on 4 December 2015, becoming West Glasgow Ambulatory Care Hospital. West Glasgow Ambulatory Care Hospital was created to house the remaining outpatient service's and the minor injury unit previously housed at the Western Infirmary.