Assessment Unit

What we do

The Assessment Unit has 16 beds at Whangarei Hospital, providing short stay (3-36 hours) acute hospital level care for General Medical, Renal, Cardiology & Respiratory inpatients.

Patients are generally admitted via the Emergency Department. A number of admissions also come in for elective procedures and from the Medical Outpatients clinics. 

The Assessment Unit is managed by a Senior Nursing Team led by a Clinical Nurse Manager who are available Mondays to Fridays during the day. The nursing team of Registered Nurses work over 3 shifts through 24 hours. Patients are assigned a nurse each shift. 

A Medical or Renal team will manage your health care. The team consists of a House Office, Registrar and Consultant Physician. Occasionally there will be Medical Students as part of the team. 

Medical Teams

Patients are seen by one of the team ever day, except for weekends and public holidays when they are seen as required by the On-Call Medical team. 

There is a multi-disciplinary team (MDT) working across the Medical service which consists of Ward Clerk, Health Care Assistant, Social Worker, Dietician, Speech Language Therapist, Pharmacist, Physiotherapist, Occupational Therapist, and Takawaenga (Maori Health Liaison). Chaplains are available on request. 

Families/whānau are welcome to support patients as Kaitiaki (Partners in Care) - key support people nominated by the patient, who are welcome to attend the ward rounds or to speak to medical team and/ or members of the MDT. The staff will facilitate this as requested. 

Hours

Visiting hours and policies can change. Click here for the current visiting policy. 

Kaitiaki (Partners in Care) key support people as nominated by the patient can visit between 8am-8pm every day. 

Location 

Ground Floor, Medical Wing, Whangārei Hospital, Maunu Road, Whangārei.

Providing Feedback 

The Whangārei Hospital Medical Service strives to deliver a high standard of health care. We welcome feedback as this helps us to improve the quality of our service delivery. There are a variety of ways feedback can be provided:

• complete a green feedback form, available on each ward
• phone +64 9 430 4100 and request to speak to the Assessment Unit Clinical Nurse Manager 
• submit your feedback online