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The Medical Research Council have long supported research directly
related to the needs of patients. They maintain a number of clinical
research units attached to hospitals throughout the country, and award
grants to individual doctors carrying out their own programmes of
research. However, medical knowledge is steadily becoming more complex
and to find solutions to particular problems it becomes more and more
necessary to enlist the collaborative efforts of numbers of research workers
possessing different skills and experience. The setting up of a national
centre which would act as a focal point for clinical research for the whole
country seemed to be the answer to this problem. In order that such a
Research Centre be in constant touch with trends and changing patterns
of disease in day-to-day medical practice it seemed reasonable that the
Centre should be incorporated within a general hospital providing a full
range of services to the community and dealing with current medical
problems.
The Northwick Park Hospital and Clinical Research Unit will be the
outcome of this joint development.
The project took a significant step forward in 1963 when the Project
Committee submitted plans to the County Planning Authority and the
public were given an opportunity of seeing the proposed layout at a most
excellent local exhibition.
The District Hospital has been designed with the specific intention
of meeting the present and future needs of the population living in nearby
parts of Harrow and Wembley and in neighbouring parts of Willesden,
Hendon and Edgware. The site is centrally situated and reasonably easy
of access by public transport from all parts of the area. The hospital's
size and the range of services it will offer have been determined by the
number of people it has to serve and by seeing it as part of the hospital
plan for the whole region. In addition, the special needs arising from the
presence of the Clinical Research Centre have been taken into account.
On this basis it has been estimated that the combined unit should provide
accommodation for about 800 patients. The plans for the hospital include
provision for 100 maternity beds, 50 beds for actually ill old people and a
unit of 75 beds for the treatment of mental illness. The wards have been
specially designed to be flexible in use; one ward may be used for either
medical or surgical patients so as to meet seasonal changes in demand,
and in the children's ward there will be rooms where mothers can be with
their children in hospital.
The out-patients department has been planned so that there are
separate waiting spaces for each clinic. The ante-natal clinic will be on the
ground floor of the maternity unit, which has been sited as conveniently
as possible for the hospital entrance and the bus stops, and on the groun
floor of the psychiatric block will be a day hospital and treatment centre
to which patients can come for treatment without having to be admitted
as in-patients. The out-patient services will also include a Hearing Aid
Centre.