St. Vincent's University Hospital

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St. Vincent's Hospital was founded in 1834 on St. Stephen's Green, Dublin by Mother Mary Aikenhead foundress of the religious Sisters of Charity. The hospital was open to all who required its services, irrespective of their religious persuasion.

The hospital was subsequently moved to its current site in Elm Park in 1970, and in 1999 was renamed as St. Vincent's University Hospital. The hospital is a teaching hospital of University College Dublin.

Commonly abbreviated to SVUH, St. Vincent's University Hospital is a major academic teaching hospital located in the Dublin 4 area. It provides a front line emergency service and national/regional medical care at inpatient and outpatient level. Many cases from tertiary hospitals get referred to SVUH (it is the national referral centre for liver transplantation and adult cystic fibrosis), adding to its value as a training ground for future health care professionals. Tied closely to the University, it serves as a training ground for future doctors, nurses, radiographers and physiotherapists, teaching students from UCD's undergraduate degree courses.

The hospital provides in excess of forty medical specialities, and has 479 in-patient beds, incorporating 7-day, 5-day and day care options. A major new multimillion-euro extension building was completed in 2005 and officially opened in 2006. This development contains a new Emergency Department, outpatient clinics, Intensive Care Unit, diagnostic laboratories and operating theatres, as well as a state-of-the art Radiology Department (incorporating Multislice CT-Scanners, Nuclear Medicine and, for the first time in SVUH, an MRI Scanner).

The on-campus Education & Research Centre serves as home to a number of research groups allied to clinical departments within the hospital (including the Centre for Colorectal Disease, the National Liver Transplant Unit and the Department of Rheumatology), and maintains close academic links to nearby UCD.