Emergency 

Western and Sunshine Hospital

	Western Hospital	Sunshine Hospital
Telephone (GP Only)	8345 6393	8345 1596 or 8345 1595
Facsimile	8345 6343	8345 1447
Location	Eleanor Street, Footscray	Furlong Road, St Albans
Hours	24 hours	24 hours
Services Offered	All adult emergencies	Paediatric, women's health and adult emergencies
Clinical Director	Dr Michael Bryant	Dr Peter Ritchie

 How to Refer

We recommend that GPs refer by telephone, as this is
more reliable than fax transmission. The Emergency Departments require:

• the referring GP's name and contact details
• the patient's name, date of birth, address, past medical history, current medications, the current problem and any relevant treatment or investigations.

If faxing a referral, please mark as 'Emergency Referral' and provide your fax number to allow us to provide prompt feedback to you.

Where there is doubt about the appropriateness of the Emergency Department referral or if urgent advice is sought, the duty emergency physician or registrar can be contacted by telephoning the required emergency department (see above table). For example, some sub speciality services are not available at Sunshine and if the patient is time-critical it may be useful to discuss the patient with the senior ED doctor before sending the patient.

For subacute orthopaedic and plastics cases that are not time critical, we recommend GPs contact the relevant registrar and arrange for the patient to be reviewed. This will save the patient waiting many hours in the ED.

 

The Williamstown Hospital 

	The Williamstown Hospital
Telephone	9393 0101 or 9393 0150
Facsimile	9393 0219
Hours	8.00 am - 11.00 pm (For emergencies outside the opening hours, patients should be referred directly to Western or Sunshine Hospitals)
Director	Dr Allen Yuen

Services offered

Williamstown Hospital ED is capable of handling most emergencies, with the following restrictions:

• Major/multiple trauma (which should be transported to the two Major Trauma Centres, Royal Melbourne Hospital or The Alfred.
• Neonates (refer to Royal Children's Hospital) 
• Acute psychosis (refer to Sunshine Hospital)

The Williamstown emergency department offers adult urgent care and is not appropriate for time critical emergency or major trauma.

If any patient requires admission, we have to transfer them to

• Western Hospital Footscray (adults, ICU & CCU)
• Sunshine Hospital (paediatrics)

It is preferable, if the patient has already been seen by their local doctor, that the GP should refer them directly to Western (adults) or Sunshine (children), to save doubling up on ambulance transfers, ED assessments and use of resources.

Admissions

The only emergency admissions Williamstown Hospital can take are simple surgical adult cases or uncomplicated geriatric patients prior to 5pm. Please contact us on 9393 0109 to discuss whether we can accept a patient, as there may not be an available bed.