Formerly Southern DHB General Medicine - Otago
General Medicine is a branch of medicine that deals with the diagnosis and non-surgical treatments of diseases in adults, with approximately 3000 admissions each year via the Emergency Department. This fully acute service manages patients who are not specifically being managed by a specialty service, or who have multiple medical problems.
Eighty-five percent of acute stroke presentations to Dunedin Hospital are also admitted to General Medicine. All are admitted to the Acute Stroke Unit (ASU).
The General Medicine Team consists of medical staff, charge nurse managers, nurses, a service educator, ward receptionists, social workers, physiotherapists, occupational therapists and speech language therapists.
Specialists in this field are called specialist general physicians. They are doctors who have trained in various specialties such as diseases of the heart, lungs, brain and other organs. Often people have more than one part of the body involved in an illness or the exact cause of symptoms is not clear. The General Physician is an expert in diagnosing what is wrong and managing illnesses that are complex.
Outpatient clinics are delivered at Dunedin, Dunstan and Clutha Health First hospitals.