Accident and Emergency Department Acuta

At Tays Accident and Emergency Department Acuta, we provide treatment every day around the clock for patients who have suddenly fallen ill or become injured. Emergency care services are intended for patients whose examination or treatment cannot safely be postponed until the next business day or when postponing treatment could cause permanent damage to their health, as well as patients whose life is threatened.

Patients are referred to the specialised emergency care by a physician. Without a referral, treatment is provided only in case of acute health and life-threatening accidents and illnesses.

Treatment at basic healthcare emergency services is provided without a referral. At Tays Accident and Emergency Department Acuta, we treat patients who have suddenly become injured or fallen ill and who cannot be treated at health care centres.

The basic healthcare emergency service is mainly for the residents of Tampere. At night, residents of Hämeenkyrö, Ikaalinen, Nokia, Orivesi, Pirkkala, Ruovesi, Sastamala, Virrat and Ylöjärvi are also treated here.

Registration

When arriving at Accident and Emergency Department Acuta, take a queue number from the machine in the draught lobby. The number will appear on the monitors in the lobby when the patient is to be seen or their need for treatment and its urgency is examined. The visit numbers are in random order and they are not related to the order of urgency.

Treatment at Accident and Emergency Department

Accident and Emergency Department Acuta triages patients based on the severity of their illness or injury. The need for treatment and urgency is assessed by the receiving nurse, i.e. the triage nurse. If you do not have a life-threatening illness or an injury that requires emergency care, you will be referred to another treatment place or sent home.

After the assessment of the need for treatment, the patient is instructed to wait in the lobby or taken straight to the ward to a bed, from where the patient will be seen by a nurse or physician.

You will always get to meet a physician if your condition requires an urgent assessment by a physician. If necessary, you will be sent to the laboratory or radiography department for further studies. Next, the physician will decide where and how you will be treated.

The goal is to receive patients within two hours of registration. However, due to the unscheduled nature of emergency medicine, you may have to wait much longer. The overall treatment time of a patient waiting in the lobby is usually a little less than two hours. The overall treatment time of patients waiting in the ward in treatment groups is approximately 3.5 hours.

Treatment in the Observation Unit

You may be admitted to the Observation Unit for further studies or monitoring for one or two days. The Observation Unit also treats patients requiring urgent short-term hospital care, such as patients with infections, cardioversion patients, patients requiring observation via a monitor, patients with mild poisoning, as well as surgical patients with short-term post-operative treatment, such as patients who have had an appendectomy.

After a treatment period in the Observation Unit, the physician will decide whether the patient can be sent home or whether the patient needs enhanced outpatient care at home or care in a ward at the health care centre or the hospital.

Facilities and staff

The facilities of Tays Accident and Emergency Department Acuta are approximately 4,000 square metres in size. There is a large waiting lobby for patients, which has been divided into different lettered sections. Visitors to the dental emergency services also wait in the same lobby. Child patients have a separate alcove in the lobby.

The emergency services are divided into treatment groups according to specialties. Patients are treated in several different bed groups based on symptoms. All in all, the Emergency Department Acuta has approximately 70 bed places. To protect patient safety and privacy, beds have been placed in rooms which cannot be freely accessed by Acuta visitors.

Acuta's staff includes almost 200 employees as well as on-call physicians from different specialties, and support personnel. Approximately 50 employees are working a shift at a time: physicians, nurses, paramedic nurses, ward secretaries, hospital caregivers, porters and guards.

Approximately 100,000 patients are treated at Acuta annually. The Observation Unit is used for about 8,500 treatment days each year.

The dental emergency service for all municipalities in the Pirkanmaa Hospital District also operates in the facilities of Accident and Emergency Department Acuta. Its operations are provided by the City of Tampere as well as the specialised care unit of the Policlinic of Oral and Maxillofacial Diseases at Tays.

Persons in charge

Chief Physician Jutta Delany
Nursing Director Sonja Hietaranta
Ward Manager Heidi Jokela