Welcome to the Gastroenterology team! We hope you have an enjoyable and educational time with us. If you have any concerns or issues at any time, please just say. We are one big team and help is always there if needed.

Consultants

There are currently 10 consultants

Overview of the Ward

Gastroenterology is currently based on Ward 45. Each week a different Consultant is rostered to be the Gastroenterologist of the week (GOW). During that week the GOW undertakes daily ward rounds, sees, or oversees the in-patient referrals with support of the registrars and ANP, and covers the out of hours GI bleed rota.

The following week the “GOW” becomes the “post-GOW”. They will do a ward round on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday (they will attend the ward for trouble shooting on Tuesday/Thursday). Their patients will be reviewed on the remaining days by the Gastroenterology junior doctors (Reg/SHO/ F1). The post-GOW is usually available to answer clinical queries and can be contacted via telephone/email/secretaries (you will need to check with the individual Consultant the best way to contact them).  At the end of this week, any patient left under the “post-GOW” consultant is transferred over to the new “GOW”. Ward patients will generally be split between the ‘GOW’ and ‘post-GOW’ into roughly equal numbers.

Weekdays

Junior Doctors are expected to be on the ward from 09:00 each morning, to prepare for/ start the ward round and address any urgent issues. Generally, Consultant ward rounds start at 09:00 however each Consultant may vary slightly in their start times.

We aim to start the day with a quick ‘Board Round’ with the Nurse in charge. This is to highlight any sick patients to be seen first, potential discharges, new patients and general ward issues.

Discharges

Discharges can often be identified well in advance. Please be proactive and review these patients early. Ensure appropriate e-discharges/TTOs are completed to facilitate a prompt discharge early in the day. Please do not allow e-discharges to accumulate as the department gets fined £500 for each discharge summary that is delayed over 48 hours.

When there are enough juniors on the ward it can be useful for one member of the team to take some time off the ward to ensure any outstanding E-discharges can be completed.

It is also often helpful to keep e-discharge forms updated with diagnoses and important investigation results as well as follow up plans as part of ward round documenting practice. This also helps to allow quick sign off of discharge summaries as patients are discharged; particularly, when patients have been with us for prolonged periods of time.

**In the last 12 months with the introduction of Cerner there have been some incidents with follow up investigations being automatically cancelled when a patient is discharged, please ensure the radiology department has been contacted to ensure urgent test are added to the outpatient waitlist when a patient is discharged**

Useful Care bundles:

There are several care bundles we use within the department to aid effective treatment and ongoing care for our inflammatory bowel disease and chronic liver disease patients.  All are accessible on the intranet and can be added to your auto text on Cerner (please speak to the specialist nurses for details)

• Decompensated Liver cirrhosis bundle
• Liver Cirrhosis discharge bundle
• IBD discharge bundle

How to add care bundles on Cerner