You may have heard people talk about the ‘Take’ if you’ve ever been admitted to hospital.
Put simply, the ‘Take’ is a list of all patients who have been seen that day (or 24-hour period), in or near A&E (or Emergency Department, ED); by a specialty team – eg ‘medics’ (non-surgeons), surgeons, paediatricians (childrens doctors) etc. For example, there is a ‘medical take’ (dealing with heart attacks, strokes, pneumonia) and a ‘surgical take’ (appendicitis).
Patients on the take have been referred by the A&E team to these specialty teams because they need further treatment on a same-day basis, or need to be admitted to hospital.
You may hear doctors talking about a ‘busy’ or a ‘quiet’ take. To put it simply, this means, many or few patients have been seen by the specialty team that day.
The take is overseen by an ‘on-call’ registrar and a team of more junior doctors. You will usually be seen by a consultant who is in overall charge of your care. Some patients may be well enough that they can be sent home without seeing a consultant.
You may be asked to re-attend on another day for a ‘follow-up’ review to make sure you are safe to stay at home. You may also be asked to come back on a later date for a diagnostic procedure, or for a treatment – eg a blood transfusion (if you are safe to go home in the meantime while waiting for it).
This may take place in a special part of the hospital called an ‘Ambulatory Emergency Care Unit (AECU)’ or a ‘Same Day Emergency Care (SDEC) unit’.
