The Medicine specialty is the heart of Kingston Health Sciences Centre (KHSC) and is its largest program related to staying in the hospital to receive care for a variety of reasons, including contagious diseases like flu, strokes and other brain disorders, and complications related to longer-term conditions such as diabetes and digestive issues.
You may be admitted to one of the Medicine units after a visit to an emergency department, through a transfer from another hospital, or referred to a unit by a specialist, family doctor or another care facility.
Located in the Connell, Davies and Kidd wings of KHSC’s Kingston General Hospital site, the Medicine program includes units for the following specialties:
Epilepsy Monitoring Unit – offers prolonged electroencephalogram (EEG) testing as well as neuropsychological and psychiatric assessments to determine if surgery is an option for patients whose seizures cannot be controlled by medication.
Internal Medicine Units – are staffed with care teams who use their deep and broad knowledge of the entire human body and its systems to provide compassionate care for people with a sudden, serious illness or with a long-term condition.
Neurosurgical Unit – cares for people after brain and spine surgery and helps them regain their function. In some cases, brain surgery is needed to remove a tumor, or spine surgery is required after a major accident or to address other spine problems such as the wearing down of the cushions or discs between the spinal bones.
Stroke Unit – helps people in their recovery after they have had a stroke, including patients who have received brain-cell-saving treatments such as those available at KHSC’s Regional Stroke Centre: the clot-busting drug tPA and the clot-removing Endovascular Treatment (EVT).
Sleep Disorders Laboratory – performs sleep studies during the day and night for people who have been referred by a primary care provider or family doctor to help diagnose and treat sleep disorders such as sleep apnea.
Transitional Support Unit – supports people with Alzheimer’s and related dementias, and those with multiple health conditions who need specialized supportive care in order to transition from the hospital to appropriate living environments.
Medicine care team
We will listen to you and partner with you to make sure you are involved in all decisions about your care and treatment plan. Our teams are made up of a number of different professionals who will work with you to get you back on the road to recovery. Learn more about some of the people you may meet on your care team.
Ongoing care
If you are not already a patient at one of our outpatient clinics, when you leave the hospital you may be referred to a specialty clinic for ongoing care at KHSC or in your home community.
With an implanted device in the chest that stimulates the vagus nerve to help the brain control seizures, patients experience better quality of life
Assessing wound prevalence more often and consistently documenting treatments are improving patient care
Before the Medicine program embarked on a quality improvement initiative last summer to reduce the number of patients who develop pressure injuries, also known as bedsores, while on a Medicine unit, pressure-injury audits were done quarterly and prevalence was around nine per cent.
Audits are now done twice a month and prevalence is down to 3.9 per cent. The benchmark for acute care facilities is 3.1 per cent.
