A hospital is an institution for health care providing patient treatment by specialized staff and equipment, and often, but not always providing for longer-term patient stays.

Today, hospitals usually are funded by the public sector, by health organizations, (for profit or nonprofit), health insurance companies or charities, including by direct charitable donations. In history, however, hospitals often were founded and funded by religious orders or charitable individuals and leaders. Similarly, modern-day hospitals are largely staffed by professional physicians, surgeons, and nurses, whereas in history, this work usually was performed by the founding religious orders or by volunteers.

Types Edit

 

Some patients go to a hospital just for diagnosis, treatment, or therapy and then leave ('outpatients') without staying overnight; while others are 'admitted' and stay overnight or for several weeks or months ('inpatients'). Hospitals usually are distinguished from other types of medical facilities by their ability to admit and care for inpatients and the others often are described as a clinic.

General Edit

 

The best-known type of hospital is the general hospital, which is set up to deal with many kinds of disease and injury, and typically has an emergency department to deal with immediate and urgent threats to health. A general hospital typically is the major health care facility in its region, with large numbers of beds for intensive care and long-term care; and specialized facilities for surgery, plastic surgery, childbirth, bioassay laboratories, and so forth. Larger cities may have many several hospitals of varying sizes and facilities. Some hospitals, especially in the United States, have their own ambulance service.

Specialized Edit

File:McMasterUMedical.JPG

A teaching hospital in Canada

 

Types of specialized hospitals include trauma centers, rehabilitation hospitals, children's hospitals, seniors' (geriatric) hospitals, and hospitals for dealing with specific medical needs such as psychiatric problems (see psychiatric hospital), certain disease categories, and so forth.

 

A hospital may be a single building or a number of buildings on a campus. Many hospitals with pre-twentieth-century origins began as one building and evolved into campuses. Some hospitals are affiliated with universities for medical research and the training of medical personnel such as physicians and nurses, often called teaching hospitals. Worldwide, most hospitals are run on a nonprofit basis by governments or charities. Within the United States, most hospitals are nonprofit.

Teaching Edit

 

A teaching hospital combines assistance to patients with teaching to medical students and nurses and often is linked to a medical school or nursing school. Some of these are associated with universities

Clinics Edit

 

A medical facility smaller than a hospital is generally called a clinic, and often is run by a government agency for health services or a private partnership of physicians (in nations where private practice is allowed). Clinics generally provide only outpatient services.

Departments Edit

 

Resuscitation room bed after a trauma intervention, showing the highly technical equipment of modern hospitals

Added by PhloxBot

File:Hospital beds.jpg

Empty ward and iron beds in a hospital in Kharkov, Ukraine

See also:

 

Hospitals vary widely in the services they offer and therefore, in the departments they have. They may have acute services such as an emergency department or specialist trauma centre, burn unit, surgery, or urgent care. These may then be backed up by more specialist units such as cardiology or coronary care unit, intensive care unit, neurology, cancer center, and obstetrics and gynecology.

 

Some hospitals will have outpatient departments and some will have chronic treatment units such as behavioral health services, dentistry, dermatology, psychiatric ward, rehabilitation services, and physical therapy.

 

Common support units include a dispensary or pharmacy, pathology, and radiology, and on the non-medical side, there often are medical records departments and/or release of information department.

History Edit

Early examples Edit

 

Etymology Edit Словоупотребление – это

 

закономерности выбора и сочетания слов в речи. О нормах медицинского словоупотребления

 

 

During the Middle Ages the hospital could serve other functions, such as almshouse for the poor, hostel for pilgrims, or hospital school. The name comes from Latin hospes (host), which also is the root for the English words hotel, hostel, and hospitality. The modern word hotel derives from the French word hostel, which featured a silent s, eventually removed from the word to leave a circumflex on modern French hôtel. The word also is related to the Sanskrit word 'Ispital' and the German 'Spital'.

 

Grammar of the word differs slightly depending on the dialect. In the U.S., hospital usually requires an article; in Britain and elsewhere, the word normally is used without an article when it is the object of a preposition and when referring to a patient ("in/to the hospital" vs. "in/to hospital"); in Canada, both uses are found.

 

A clinic (or outpatient clinic or ambulatory care clinic) is a health care facility that is primarily devoted to the care of outpatients. Clinics can be privately operated or publicly managed and funded, and typically cover the primary health care needs of populations in local communities, in contrast to larger hospitals which offer specialised treatments and admit inpatients for overnight stays. Some clinics grow to be institutions as large as major hospitals, or become associated with a hospital or medical school, while retaining the name “clinic."

Clinics are often associated with a general medical practice, run by one or several general practitioners or practice managers. Physiotherapy clinics are usually operated by physiotherapists and psychology clinics by clinical psychologists, and so on for each health profession. Some clinics are operated in-house by employers, government organizations or hospitals and some clinical services are outsourced to private corporations, specialising in provision of health services. In China, for example, owners of those clinics do not have formal medical education. There were 659,596 village clinics in China in 2011.[1] Health care in India, China, Russia and Africa is provided to vast rural areas by mobile health clinics or roadside dispensaries, some of which integrate traditional health practices. In India these traditional clinics provide ayurvedic medicine and unani herbal medical practice. In each of these countries traditional medicine tends to be a hereditary practice.

Etymology Edit

 

During the Middle Ages the hospital could serve other functions, such as almshouse for the poor, hostel for pilgrims, or hospital school. The name comes from Latin hospes (host), which also is the root for the English words hotel, hostel, and hospitality. The modern word hotel derives from the French word hostel, which featured a silent s, eventually removed from the word to leave a circumflex on modern French hôtel. The word also is related to the Sanskrit word 'Ispital' and the German 'Spital'.

 

Grammar of the word differs slightly depending on the dialect. In the U.S., hospital usually requires an article; in Britain and elsewhere, the word normally is used without an article when it is the object of a preposition and when referring to a patient ("in/to the hospital" vs. "in/to hospital"); in Canada, both uses are found.

 

A polyclinic (or policlinic), is a place where a wide range of health care services (including diagnostics) can be obtained without the need for an overnight stay. Polyclinics are sometimes co-located with a hospital.

A typical polyclinic is an outpatient facility that houses general medical practitioners (GPs) such as doctors and nurses to provide ambulatory care and some acute care services but lacks the major surgical and pre- and post-operative care facilities commonly associated with hospitals. Besides GPs a polyclinic can house outpatient departments of some medical specialties i.e. gynecology, dermatology, ophthalmology, ENT, neurology, pulmonology, cardiology, endocrinology etc. In some university cities polyclinics house outpatient departments of all the teaching hospital in one building.

[edit]

Internationally

 

Polyclinics are common type of healthcare facility in many countries incl. France, Germany (long tradition), Switzerland and most of the countries of Central and Eastern Europe (mixed Soviet-German model), as well as in former Soviet republics such as Russia and Ukraine;[1] and in many countries across Asia and Africa.[2] Recent Russian governments have attempted to replace the polyclinic model introduced during Soviet times with a more western model. However, this has failed.[3] India has also set up huge numbers of polyclinics for former defence personnel. The network envisages 426 polyclinics in 343 districts of the country which will benefit about 33 lakh (3.3 million) ex-servicemen residing in remote and far-flung areas.[4] Polyclinics are also the backbone of Cuba's primary care system and have been credited with a role in improving that nation's health indicators.[5]