Acute Medical Unit
Our 44-bedded AMU is located on the ground floor of the hospital. These 44 beds include two side rooms and eight monitored beds.
The purpose of AMU is to provide optimal care for patients during the first 72 hours of their inpatient hospital stay. We discharge over 50% of patients home within that window, with the remainder being zoned to the most appropriate bed under another specialty.
AMU is split into four areas: Blue, Green, Lilac and Yellow. You can see a diagram of the unit here.
Resident Cover
Residents look after EIGHT to NINE bed spaces during a typical day. Some of these bed spaces will turn over more than once. If a patient arrives in your bed space who needs a post-take review, make sure you flag them up to a consultant early.
The system for allocating these bed spaces can seem a little confusing at first, but we promise you'll soon get used to it. If you're unsure where you're meant to be covering, please just ask one of the consultants.
Sometimes, due to sickness, you'll be expected to cover extra patients, but we try to avoid this if we can.
Blue Resident
Covers EIGHT patients split between O Bay and P Bay
Green Resident
Covers FOUR patients in N Bay and FOUR patients in M Bay
Yellow Resident
Covers SEVEN patients in Yellow and ONE patient in Side Room 2
Lilac Resident
Covers FOUR patients in K Bay and FIVE patients in J Bay
Blue/Lilac Resident
Covers FOUR patients in L Bay and FOUR patients split between O Bay and P
A Day on AMU
08:00
Ward Round
Our day starts promptly at 08:00. We meet in the Lilac Office on AMU. Every patient on AMU will be reviewed - or at least discussed - with a consultant prior to the board round. All patients who have not already been post-taken will be seen by a consultant.
11:30
Morning Board Round
Doctors, bed managers, discharge co-ordinators and therapists will all attend this meeting in the Lilac Office. We'll discuss patients' estimated dates of discharge, identify who can home, flag up patients who need therapies input and highlight the patients who needs to move to a different ward.
12:00
Ongoing Ward Work
You will be responsible for ensuring that all the tasks required for your assigned patients are completed. If patients move to your area from ED during the day, they become your responsibility and may need further input. Similarly, if a patient moves to another ward, you should hand over any outstanding tasks to the new team.
15:30
Afternoon Board Round
After completing the necessary jobs during the early afternoon, we regroup at 15:30 to review the day's discharges. The consultants covering the unit will return for this meeting and to troubleshoot any urgent issues that have arisen.
17:00
End of the Day
Any outstanding jobs should be handed over to the on-call ward doctors using the Hospital at Night system. Our aim is to ensure the entire team leaves on time wherever possible.
Board Round Documentati0n
The aim of the board round is not to give a comprehensive presentation about patients you've seen, but rather to facilitate a multi-disciplinary approach to discharge. We have a succinct discussion about each patient, to identify who might be able to go home with therapies or social services input.
Before the board round, you should update each patient's Board Round summary (found on the right hand side of the patient's EPIC record).
This should include:
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Diagnosis
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Estimated Date of Discharge (EDD)
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Where to Zone (e.g. Cardiology, Care of the Elderly, Any Medical Bed etc)
This helps make our board rounds as efficient as possible.
We want you to go home on time wherever possible. Unfortunately, flow through AMU is such that patients often do get unwell at unexpected times. In these circumstances, it's important to hand over your patient safely to the evening ward cover team.
The contact details for the ward cover team can be found in the Frimley network on the Accurx app, which you can download below.