General medicine
Where to find this service
The General Medicine unit is the largest inpatient unit at Western Health and is made up of a multidisciplinary team of doctors, nurses, allied health professionals and pharmacists. Our teams manage patients with multiple or complex conditions across the emergency department, inpatient wards and ambulatory care settings.
We provide integrated medical care across specialties and are often the first point of contact for undifferentiated or multisystem illness.
What we do
Our teams care for patients with:
- complex, multisystem medical conditions
- undiagnosed symptoms needing investigation
- multiple chronic illnesses or frailty
- conditions requiring multidisciplinary care
- general medicine conditions admitted through the emergency department.
We work closely with other specialty units and community care providers to ensure coordinated, high-quality care.
Where services are provided
General medicine operates across:
- Sunshine Hospital
- Footscray Hospital.
Care is provided in emergency units, acute wards, short-stay units and ambulatory medical clinics.
Subspecialty care and collaboration
General medicine teams often coordinate care across a range of hospital services, including:
- cardiology
- respiratory
- neurology
- endocrinology
- infectious diseases
- gastroenterology
- renal medicine
- Aged Care and rehabilitation services
- cancer services
- surgical teams.
We provide services to other units and support safe discharge and follow-up planning.
Research and training
General medicine plays a major role in clinical teaching, supervision and research at Western Health. We support the development of junior doctors, registrars and medical students through education, supervision and rotation placements.