Royal Alexandra Hospital

Story

The Royal Alexandra Hospital is the main hospital in Paisley serving a large catchment area as much as 200,000 from Renfrewshire, stretching all the way to Oban and Argyll. The hospital is owned and run by NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, previously NHS Argyll & Clyde. The hospital was officially opened by Princess Alexandra in May 1988.FacilitiesThe hospital has 760 staffed beds.Royal Alexandra provides the local catchment area with many services. These include: an A&E department; psychiatric; general medical and surgical services; trauma and emergency surgery centre; maternity unit and a children's ward, although it is still undecided whether the children's ward will be shut down. The hospital contains the only consultant-led maternity unit for the whole south Clyde area, after this was done away with at Inverclyde Royal Hospital. Both Inverclyde Royal and the Vale of Leven Hospital retain midwife-led community maternity units. The hospital also received some re-located services from Vale of Leven Hospital in Alexandria as part of a shuffle. Nonetheless, other services from this hospital will re-locate to Southern General in Glasgow to help balance this out fairly.Glasgow Airport bombingThe hospital received patients from the 2007 Glasgow International Airport attack, including one of the suspects who was taken to the hospital under arrest with severe burns. Parts of the hospital were later evacuated when a suspect device, originally believed to be a suicide belt, was discovered on the suspect. On the afternoon of 1 July a controlled explosion of a car was carried out in the car park of the hospital.