Casualty at the Israna campus is open around the clock, all year, and it is the way in for anything that cannot wait — including the cardiac, surgical, obstetric, paediatric and orthopaedic emergencies named on the other department pages. An Advanced Life Support ambulance is available 24×7, so a serious illness or injury can be brought in with a clinician and monitoring already on it.
What happens when you arrive
The first thing that happens is assessment, not paperwork. A person with a threat to breathing, circulation or consciousness is taken through immediately; everyone else is seen in order of how sick they are, which is why the queue here is not first-come-first-served and why a family with a sprain may wait while a chest pain goes first. The on-call consultant for the relevant department is called in. Blood testing runs in the hospital’s own 24×7 laboratory, digital X-ray, ultrasound and colour Doppler are in this building, and intensive care beds sit behind casualty — which is what allows a decision to be made here instead of an onward transfer arranged here.
Conditions treated
- Accidents and trauma
- Medical emergencies
Equipment on site
- Advanced Life Support (ALS) ambulance
Timings Open 24 hours, every day
If you are bringing somebody in
- Call the emergency number in the header on the way. It saves the team from guessing what is coming through the door.
- Bring the patient’s identity proof, any existing records and the medicine strips they take — for a conscious adult with diabetes or heart disease, that list is often the treatment.
- One or two relatives who can be reached on a single phone number. The nursing station will tell you where to wait.
- Bring the insurance or GIC papers if you have them with you. A cashless claim started at admission is simpler than one reconstructed a week later; paperwork never decides whether treatment begins.
Questions people ask at the casualty desk
Longer than the person behind you, if they are sicker. That is not a queue being poorly run: in an emergency department the order is set by what threatens breathing, circulation or consciousness, and it is reset every time somebody is reviewed. The nursing station will tell you where your relative stands in that order and roughly how long, and asking does not move anybody down the list — it just takes a clinician away from the bedside.
No. Registration, identity proof and insurance or GIC formalities are collected while care is running, and a claim started at admission is easier than one reconstructed a week later. Nobody here is triaged by what they can produce at the door.
Come if the child is breathless, floppy, drowsy, refusing all feeds, blue, seizing, or under three months with a fever — those are casualty presentations at any hour. For a feverish child who is still drinking and still playing between temperatures, the paediatric session is the better visit: the consultant has the records, the time, and none of the people behind you who may need a resuscitation bay.
What happens after the emergency door
Casualty is a way in rather than a destination. From it a patient goes home with written instructions and a review date, to the ward under the department that owns the problem — surgery, orthopaedics, internal medicine, obstetrics, paediatrics or ophthalmology — to an operation theatre, or to intensive care. Blood testing, digital X-ray, ultrasound and colour Doppler are all in this building, which is what lets that decision be made in the first hour instead of after a transfer arranged from the corridor.
A road or workplace injury may need a medicolegal case and a police intimation. That is a legal process, not a delay in treatment: care comes first and staff will tell you what document is required and when.
Chest pain or pressure, breathlessness at rest, one-sided weakness or facial droop, slurred speech, a fit, unconsciousness, uncontrolled bleeding, severe burns, a serious injury, poisoning, breathless or blue infant, or labour with bleeding: come now or dial 112. Do not read further on this page.