Our orthopaedic departments treat problems that affect your musculoskeletal system, such as your muscles, joints, bones, ligaments, tendons and nerves.
The doctors and nurses who run our departments deal with everything from bone fractures to carrying out surgery on torn ligaments and hip replacements.
Orthopaedic trauma includes fractures and dislocations as well as musculoskeletal injuries to soft tissues.
Many of our services offer video calls as a more convenient way of having an appointment with one of our healthcare professionals. This reduces the need for you to attend the hospital physically.
If you have an appointment letter with a video appointment link and instructions, please read more on our Video appointments page.
All of our teams work as a multi-disciplinary service, utilising the specialist skills and knowledge from a variety of different professionals to make sure that we offer a holistic approach to patient care. We aim to provide the most appropriate and effective surgical and non-surgical intervention.
The team is separated into three specialist areas:
Referrals are accepted from GPs, hospital consultants and some specialised professionals through the Community Assessment Triage Service (CATS).
Orthopaedic trauma includes fractures and dislocations as well as musculoskeletal injuries to soft tissues.
Trauma clinics are held within each hospital’s emergency departments.
We work with the Essex Wellbeing Service to offer support to adult patients preparing to have orthopaedic surgery, with the aim of helping you be as ready as possible for your operation.
Essex Wellbeing Service will contact you directly if you are eligible, or you can contact them on 0300 303 9988, Monday to Friday between 8am and 7pm. You can also call on Saturdays between 10am and 2pm, quoting reference “Pre Op MSE”.
You can find information about the Essex Wellbeing Service on their website at https://www.essexwellbeingservice.co.uk .
All the results are sent to our office so they are checked in good time when referrals are made or treatment begins.
Any unfit patients are referred to anaesthetic clinic or to the medics.
If you need any treatment before your operation, we will contact you.
The following information is for patients attending appointments at Southend only. Please make sure that the hospital has up-to-date contact details for you.
Please call MRI on the following number 24hours after your clinic appointment to arrange your scan - call 0300 443 0121 and select option 4.
Urgent MRI scans - MRI will contact you directly with a date for your scan. Please call 01702385545 if the MRI has not contacted you after three days
If you have not had an Orthopaedic appointment arranged for your results to be given to you, once you know your MRI date, please contact Orthopaedics on 01702 435555 using extension 4069 to book an appointment.
If you are eligible, we will visit your at around one week before your pre-assessment clinic appointment with the consultant.
The integrated care pathway is started at this point where we will go through the following:
Once all of the above has been completed, the proposed surgery is discussed and sensible coping strategies put in place for the post-operative recovery period.
The home environment is checked to make sure it’s safe for the post-operative recovery period. The bed, chair and toilet heights are measured. The side of the bath is measured if you will need to stand in the bath to use the shower. The kitchen is checked and suggestions will be made to make preparing meals easier i.e. moving pans up from low cupboards.
The COMBAT team based at Basildon Hospital and provides acute care for patients with hip and knee replacements in their own home.
We facilitate home visits prior to you being admitted to hospital to assess your surroundings to make sure that you have the support in place for you when you are discharged home.
We will give support and advice, anything from environmental assessments to meals-on-wheels and specialist equipment.
The Orthopaedic Virtual fracture clinic started at Broomfield in July 2020. We designed this to be a patient focused alternative to our previous fracture clinics.
By treating you in the virtual fracture clinic, we can make sure that you get the most appropriate treatment as quickly as possible, but it also means we can reduce the number of unnecessary visits to hospital.
For more information, visit our orthopaedic virtual fracture clinic page .
When you are on the ward recovering from your operation, we will give you contact numbers for the team and the ward so you can call if you experience any post-operative problems.
We provide a post-op SOS visiting service and have a fast-track system in place for re-admission to hospital, to avoid long waits in A&E. We also can speed up clinic appointments if we feel you need an immediate review.
We also accept requests from the local GPs who quite often seek our opinion. The team now provides support at home for patients with minor wound healing problems so this should not delay discharge home.
The team will visit patients who are on the waiting list for surgery but experiencing difficulties, to assess their symptoms, offer advice and report back to the consultants.
Six weeks after your operation, we will come and visit you at home to see how you are doing and complete an assessment form. We will cover the following things:
Adult patients are seen most commonly with back problems, degenerative disease of the joints (especially hips and knees), and less severe orthopaedic conditions such as nerve entrapment syndrome and internal derangement of the knee.
We also host orthopaedic clinics for children with gait problems, dislocated hips, clubfeet, cerebral palsy and other conditions.
A follow-up service is provided for patients in hip hinges. Skin care is given and brace liners are changed on a regular basis depending on skin condition.
The team will always give advice to district nurses and GPs about best care.
We accept referrals from any source.
We run a waiting list group for patients who have problems with hips and knees. If you are one of these patients, you will be invited to come to a session after you have been on the list about three to four months.
You will be able to have a guided tour of the ward and meet other people who have had joint replacement surgery who are in different stages of their recovery.
We give a brief session on what the joint replacements look like and what to expect from your new joint. If there are any tests that you need before your operation, we can arrange for them to be done at this appointment. The nurses will examine you to make sure you are fit to have your operation. It’s really important, where possible, that you have no unhealed leg ulcers or infected toenails as these will delay your surgery due to the risk of infection.
The physiotherapists give out exercise sheets and will encourage you to try to strengthen you muscles before you are admitted.
We run a support group on a monthly basis for patients awaiting spinal surgery.
The aim of these sessions give you as much information as we can about your journey so far and what you can realistically expect following surgery.
Our chronic pain nurse specialist will explain about chronic pain and how it can affect your life.
The physiotherapist will give some information about what you should and should not do after you’ve had your surgery. They will also discusses the importance of posture and muscle control.
We give you an idea of what to expect during your admission to the ward and also about your home visits before and after surgery.
Orthopaedic appointments call 01268 524900 using extension 4994.
Orthopaedic outpatients — call 01245 362000 using extension 3900.
New patient appointments - call 01702 385244
Follow-up appointments call - 01702 435555 using extension 6543
General enquiries, call - 01702 435555 using extension 6543.