Today sees Orthopaedic Outpatients move from the Rainbow Unit at CRH to HRI. You will find them in their newly-refurbished home in Orthopaedic Outpatients, lower ground floor at HRI.

The service was due to move at the end of June, ahead of the demolition of the Rainbow Centre, which will make way for the new hospital building at CRH.

But due to there being further work in the Women and Children’s car park from today, which will remove around 30 spaces for two weeks, the service wanted to do everything they could to move sooner and free up as many parking spaces for patients and their visitors as possible.

Outpatient Manager for ENT and Orthopaedics, Jane Cash, said: “We see over 300 patients a week at CRH, so around 60 cars each day. We were due to relocate the service over to HRI where we already run an Orthopaedic Outpatient department at the end of June. But when we knew that there needed to be further parking spaces closed at CRH, we wanted to help patients with parking as much as we could, as well as other services based at CRH too.

“Orthopaedic OPD Nursing and the Plaster Team are being amazing in pulling out all the stops to help us get ready for this move! Thanks to colleagues, we have been able to get ready to move sooner than we thought, they’ve been fantastic at communicating with our patients who have been receptive about the move.

“I would also like to give a huge thank you to our estates colleagues who have been fantastic in refurbishing clinic areas to make sure the space at HRI is ready in time, and to all others who have supported us with this move."