Woodend Hospital (Oldmill Hospital)

About MeDuring World War One Oldmill (later called Woodend) Hospital was turned over to military use, becoming No. 1 Scottish General Hospital. Originally the site of a reformatory and later a poorhouse the hospital briefly became the home for many disabled soldiers, casualties of the war in Europe. Rehabilitation of men was the central task. This was part of a government-backed campaign which, apart from its humanitarian intent, was also calculated to be politically and economically beneficial. Rehabilitation could get men back to active service, back to work in civilian life and help ensure that there was no large pool of discontent in society. In 1916 the abdicated King Manuel of Portugal pushed for hospital based workshops to be set up. Oldmill Military Hospital became part of this system. Recovering casualties would spend many months confined to the hospital. Men were encouraged to come to terms with their disabilities and to look to developing skills appropriate to their circumstances. This might be making appliances for amputees, mending nets or engineering. Under the supervision of John Marnoch this facility gave some hint of how future civilian orthopaedic hospitals might be organised.

The modern Woodend Hospital is very different to that of the past. There is now a custom built Orthopaedic Department which is the centre of orthopaedic work in the North East and serves a core population of over 500,000. Facilities include outpatient rooms, four wards with over 90 beds, three specialised laminar flow operating suites and xray and MRI imaging suites. The elective orthopaedic unit at Woodend sees approximately 7,000 new patients per year with over 2,000 suffering from osteoarthritis. 13 consultant orthopaedic surgeons supervise over 800 total joint replacements per year and in addition a wide range of hand, knee, shoulder, spinal and tumour surgery.

Emergency orthopaedics is performed on the Aberdeen Royal Infirmary site which is one of the few trauma units in the county with all the facilities required for a top level (grade one) listing. Many thousands of fractures every year are dealt with in the busy fracture clinics and as in-patients in the specialised ward 46/47 trauma unit.

The busy paediatric (children's) orthopaedic department deals with all aspects of children's bone and joint disease in the Royal Aberdeen Children's Hospital.