Northwick Park Hospital

Northwick Park Hospital
London North West Healthcare NHS Trust
Geography
Location Brent, London, England
Organisation
Care system NHS England
Hospital type District General
Affiliated university Imperial College London
Services
Emergency department Yes
Beds 463[1]
History
Founded 1970
Links
Website http://www.lnwh.nhs.uk
Lists Hospitals in England

Northwick Park Hospital (NPH) is a hospital in Greater London, England. It is located in the northwest corner of the London Borough of Brent, near the boundary with the London Borough of Harrow.

Hospital role

NPH is a National Health Service (England) (NHS) hospital. It is part of London North West Healthcare NHS Trust and is a teaching hospital for students of Imperial College School of Medicine..

St. Mark's Hospital, a national centre of gastrointestinal medicine is based at the same site, as is the British Olympic Association's Olympic Medical Institute.[2]

Local charity Radio Harrow is based within the hospital and has provided a dedicated patient visiting and broadcasting service since 1971.

Northwick Park is one of the few hospitals in England to have a Paternoster lift transport system. This was featured in the film The Omen. Access to the lift is controlled by smart card, for staff use only.

Location and accessibility

A number of bus routes including 182, 186, 223, H9, H10 and H14 and night bus N18, serve the hospital, most of them calling at dedicated bus interchange sited within the hospital grounds near the main Watford Road entrance on the west side of the site; other buses pass nearby on Kenton Road and Watford Road without entering the hospital. The nearest railway stations are Kenton, Northwick Park and Harrow on the Hill, all of which have direct bus connections. There are direct links by bus from other areas including Edgware, Wembley, Hendon and Kingsbury.

Northwick Park Underground station is connected to the hospital by a footpath, and the journey takes approximately 5–10 minutes.

Car parking is plentiful in multistorey and ground-level car parks around the site. All car parks are pay & display; there are concessions for longer term visitors, patients in receipt of supplementary benefits can obtain refunds of parking fees at the hospital. There are a limited number of spaces (avoiding the need to use the barriers and ticket machines) for Blue badge holders. The car park is a cash only system.

The hospital's retail centre, The Square, contains a branch of Costa Coffee, a Northwick Park League of Friends Shop, a fruit and vegetable market and a hair salon. There is also a Marks & Spencer Simply Food store, a convenience store operated by W H Smith, a dry cleaner, and several other outlets around the site that are operated by W H Smith, hospital volunteers or the St Mark's League of Friends.

History

Designed by the British architect John Weeks (1921–2005), the hospital was commissioned by the NW Metropolitan Regional Hospital Board in the late 1960s, and was opened by Queen Elizabeth II in 1970.

It featured in the opening credits of the episode "The Germans" of the comedy TV series Fawlty Towers and the 1976 horror film The Omen, and has been used as a set for both series of the Channel 4 comedy Green Wing and the seventh series of ITV's Prime Suspect.

In March 1975, the world's first body CT Scanner was installed at Northwick Park Hospital.

In 1994, the internationally renowned St Mark's Hospital, previously located in central London, moved into a wing of the hospital formerly occupied by the Medical Research Council. The hospital retains its research pedigree through its association with Imperial College School of Medicine and its own Northwick Park Institute of Medical Research.

In 2005, the hospital's maternity department was named as having one of the highest death rates in the United Kingdom.[3] During the period April 2002 to March 2004, the maternal death rate for the maternity unit was 74.2 per 100,000, 6.5 times the national average of 11.4 per 100,000, as reported by Cemach (Confidential Enquiry into Maternal and Child Health). A range of "special measures" designed to improve maternity services and public confidence in the services was agreed with the Trust and these were all complied with within a year.

TGN incident

Main article: TGN1412

On 13 March 2006, six people in a clinical trial at the independent Parexel drug trial unit (which is not run by The North West London Hospitals NHS Trust) became severely unwell following administration of TGN1412, and were transferred to the intensive therapy unit at Northwick Park. Affected patients developed multi-organ failure and required intensive medical support by the critical care team at Northwick Park, led by Dr Ganesh Suntharalingam. All the patients subsequently survived and the last one was discharged in June 2006. Victims from this drug trial sought compensation for their multiple injuries with the help of a British law firm. Parexel, the American company responsible for the clinical trial, brought their own lawyers along for the hearings about the TGN1412 drug, billed as a possible wonder cure for arthritis, multiple sclerosis and leukaemia. The compensation money will largely be spent on equipment, adaptations and assistance they will need with their injuries.[4]

In popular culture

In the 1976 film The Omen, the external scene when Katherine's body falls from a window and crashes into a parked ambulance was filmed at Northwick Park Hospital. Hospital anesthetist Pete Knobbler acted as body double for Billie Whitelaw and can be seen briefly peering from the window.

In episode 6, season 1 of Fawlty Towers, Sybil is in Northwick Park Hospital for ingrown toenail surgery. Basil later joins her after he gets a concussion during the fire drill.

The British sitcom Green Wing was filmed partly in Northwick Park Hospital and partly in North Hampshire Hospital.

Before becoming the lead singer for Duran Duran, Simon Le Bon worked as a theatre porter at Northwick Park Hospital Accident and Casualty.

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Northwick Park Hospital - DrFosterHealth.co.uk". Dr Foster. Retrieved 16 May 2011.
  2. ↑ http://www.olympics.org.uk/omi/home.aspx
  3. ↑ "Saving Mothers Lives 2003-2005 - Report on confidential enquiries into maternal deaths in the United Kingdom". ChiMat. Retrieved 22 November 2014.
  4. ↑ Dixon, Rob (17 April 2008). "Ryan Wilson Drug Trial Victim". Sheffield: Irwin Mitchell. Retrieved 10 July 2013.

External links

Coordinates: 51°34′34″N 0°19′19″W / 51.576°N 0.322°W / 51.576; -0.322

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