The Western General Hospital (often abbreviated to simply "The Western"), at Crewe Road, Edinburgh, Scotland, is part of NHS Lothian, a Health Board which provides a comprehensive range of adult and paediatric care to the people of Edinburgh, the Lothians and beyond.
It is one of the main teaching hospitals affiliated to the University of Edinburgh Medical School. Although the Western no longer has an Accident and Emergency it does contain the Acute Receiving and Admissions Unit which takes turns receiving emergency medical patients, sees suspected colorectal surgery or urological cases and also houses a nurse-led minor injuries unit. It also serves as a base for the neurology and neurosurgery centre for south east Scotland ("Department of Clinical Neurosciences"), the regional oncology, infectious diseases and haematology Units, the regional Colorectal Surgical Unit and the Stroke Research Unit for Lothian. There is a major national cancer research and treatment centre at the hospital. The first Maggie's Cancer Caring Centre opened at the Western General in 1996.
The hospital also contains the Adult Cystic Fibrosis Unit. (Clinical services in Scotland for adults with cystic fibrosis are also provided from Aberdeen Royal Infirmary and Gartnavel General Hospital in Glasgow.) The Edinburgh team runs an outreach clinic in Dundee, and the University of Dundee is home to the cystic fibrosis audit database, which collects data on all registered CF patients to monitor their health trends. Training and support is also available for patients and their carers to facilitate and maximise independent living and to encourage community based management wherever possible, and there is also provision for in-patient and day case clinical management.
The nearby Royal Victoria Hospital, Edinburgh is due to be reprovided on the Western General Hospital site in May 2012 with at least 130 Medicine for the Elderly and Stroke rehabilitation beds moving onto the site in addition to the existing 64 Acute Medicine for the Elderly / Acute Stroke beds.
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“When Western people train the mind, the focus is generally on the left hemisphere of the cortex, which is the portion of the brain that is concerned with words and numbers. We enhance the logical, bounded, linear functions of the mind. In the East, exercises of this sort are for the purpose of getting in tune with the unconscious—to get rid of boundaries, not to create them.”
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