John Hunter Hospital

The John Hunter Hospital (sometimes known as the JHH or more colloquially the John) is the principal referral centre and a community hospital for Newcastle, Lake Macquarie and Northern New South Wales. It is the main teaching hospital of the University of Newcastle. The hospital contains the only trauma centre in New South Wales outside of the Sydney Metropolitan Area, and has the busiest emergency department in the state.^[2]

Overview

John Hunter is the region's largest hospital with 550 adult beds and another 101 paediatric beds in the John Hunter Children's Hospital. The Royal Newcastle Centre (formerly Royal Newcastle Hospital), opened next to the John Hunter Hospital in April 2006, providing another 144 beds. Patients from the Hunter Region and beyond are referred to John Hunter for treatment in a range of specialities, including Anaesthesia and Intensive Care, Orthopaedics (elective and trauma), Cardiology and Cardiac surgery, Emergency Medicine, Endocrinology, Gastroenterology, Neonatal Intensive Care, Nephrology, Neurology, Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Oral and Maxillofacial surgery, Respiratory Medicine, and Trauma.

The John Hunter Children's Hospital and Royal Newcastle Centre are located within the same building as the John Hunter Hospital

Origin of name

A unique aspect of the John Hunter Hospital is the reasoning behind its name. Rather than being named after one person, the JHH is named in honour of three men, all of whom were called John Hunter. They were:

• John Hunter, a former governor of New South Wales and the namesake of the whole Hunter region
• John Hunter, the famed 18th century surgeon and pioneer of anatomical pathology, and
• John Irvine Hunter, an Australian anatomist who died in 1924 at the age of 26, having already been appointed the youngest anatomy professor at the University of Sydney

References

External links

• John Hunter Children's Hospital website
• Hunter New England Local Health Network