King’s College Hospital is a well-known acute care facility, serving people with severe injuries or urgent medical conditions that will only require care for a short time but nonetheless require it to be given intensively. It also serves as a teaching hospital affiliated in particular with King’s College. It is currently well-known for its role in Channel 4’s 2011 documentary “24 Hours in A&E” during the filming of which around seventy film cameras were placed in unobtrusive locations around the hospital to document an average day in the Accident and Emergency Department.
The hospital primarily serves inner-city London where it is the main hospital for over 700,000 people although it can also be used as a referral centre for various specialist healthcare needs for millions of people around Southern England. It is home to a highly regarded liver unit and operates the largest liver transplantation program in Europe as well as offering the most highly developed liver care service. Its specialists have a particular interest in pediatric liver cancers. Another of the hospital’s specialisms is movement disorders and it is houses a very large outpatient clinic for sufferes of motor neurone disease, parkinson’s and others.
The hospital’s history began in 1840 when King’s College London took over the buildings of what had been the St Clement Danes workhouse. The surrounding area was incredibly poverty-stricken and disease was an everyday part of life for most of the local residents. Unsurprisingly, the hospital was soon treating more people than could be properly accommodated in beds of their own. The hospital grew in size and prestige under the influence of many doctors including Joseph Lister who pioneered antiseptic surgery and who became the second man in England to operate on a brain tumour at this hospital. By the early twentieth century these changes led the hospital to decamp to its present site in Denmark Hill as the area was greener and provided a more pleasant environment for convalescent patients.
Things changed again with the establishment of the UK National Health Service and it was soon granted Teaching Hospital status as well as being granted a catchment area for which it was in charge of being the centre of all health services. The Weston Education Centre was built in 1997 which is a medical education centre which contains a library and areas for hosting medical conferences and training events. In 2002 the Golden Jubilee wing was opened to provide a place for outpatient clinics and rooms designed to house speech pathology therapists.
The hospital is served by Denmark Hill Railway Station and is conveniently located just a three minute walk away from Ruskin Park where many of the staff and patients take walks or play sports in order to help them recover or just escape from the stressful hospital environment. Within a five minute walk of this hospital is also the Maudsley hospital which specialises in psychiatric disorders and also the Institute of Psychiatry. There is also a campus of King’s College University, the Denmark Hill Campus, in the area