This section of the website provides information and resources relating to all aspects of the Medical On-Call at Birmingham Heartlands Hospital. Please navigate through the content using the scrolling menu box to the left or the icons at the bottom of each page. Alternatively, you can download the full Medical On-Call Operational Policy for Birmingham Heartlands in PDF format.
On-calls for acute/general medicine are often some of the busiest shifts on a junior doctor’s rotation; there is an average medical ‘take’ of 60-70 referrals per day at the Birmingham Heartlands site. Despite this intensity, on-calls can be a very rewarding and enjoyable clinical experience with exposure to a wide range of acutely unwell medical patients, high levels of Consultant supervision (during the day/evening) and ample opportunity for training and education.
The hub for general/acute medical on-calls at Birmingham Heartlands Hospital (BHH) is our Acute Medical Unit (AMU) on Ward 20. AMU is divided into 4 zones with 34 medical assessment beds (Zones 1, 2 and 4) and a 10-bedded chest pain assessment unit (CPAU in Zone 3). There is a central on-call doctor’s office on AMU (between Zones 1 and 4). This houses a large television screen displaying the list of patients to be clerked on AMU in order of arrival, using a programme called MSS Patient First (the same programme that is used to track patients in ED). The AMU seminar room is the base for all medical handovers.