Where the Action Happens
This highly sterile area is where surgeons, anesthesiologists, nurses, and techs perform procedures ranging from appendectomies to transplants.
What is the Operating Room (OR)?
These clinics provide same-day care for non-life-threatening illnesses and injuries, like sprains or ear infections.
What are urgent care clinics?
From blood tests to biopsies, this department delivers results that guide nearly every diagnosis and treatment.
What is Laboratory Medicine?
Nurse Practitioners and Physician Assistants are part of this group, which provides advanced care often similar to physicians.
What are Advanced Practice Providers (APPs)?
This is the three-part mission of an academic medical center like UW Medicine.
What are clinical care, education, and research?
This department is often called the “front door” of the hospital, treating trauma, heart attacks, strokes, and other emergencies 24/7.
What is the Emergency Department (ED)?
Family medicine and internal medicine clinics are examples of this type of outpatient care.
What is primary care?
A rural hospital calls because they need to send a trauma patient to Harborview. This service coordinates the transfer.
What is the Transfer Center?
These team members work on inpatient units to provide basic patient care like vital signs, bathing, and mobility under the supervision of an RN.
What is a Patient Care Technician (PCT)
With divisions like Cardiology, Oncology, and Pulmonary & Critical Care, this is the largest clinical department in the UW School of Medicine.
What is the Department of Medicine?
In this specialized lab, doctors thread catheters into the heart to diagnose or treat conditions like blocked arteries.
What is the Cardiac Catheterization Lab (Cath Lab)?
This type of care, which grew rapidly during the COVID-19 pandemic, allows patients to connect with providers by video or phone instead of visiting in person.
What is telehealth?
From masks to IV tubing, this department ensures supplies and equipment reach the right place at the right time.
What is Supply Chain Management?
This role helps schedule appointments, check patients in, and handle insurance and billing questions in clinics.
What is a Patient Services Specialist (PSS)?
After graduating from medical school, nearly all physicians in the U.S. must complete this stage of training before they can practice independently.
What is residency?
This department is where patients stay for a few days to recover from surgery or to receive treatment for medical conditions like pneumonia or diabetes.
What is Med-Surg (Medical-Surgical Unit)?
True or False – Ambulatory care can be based inside hospitals as well as outside of hospitals.
What is true?
Patients on ventilators or those struggling to breathe rely on this team for oxygen therapy and airway support.
What is Respiratory Therapy?
This type of RN can work in different units across the hospital, filling in wherever staffing is needed.
What is a Float Pool Nurse?
The School of Medicine is made up of clinical departments and these departments that focus on teaching and research in areas like biochemistry, microbiology, and pharmacology.
What are basic science departments (also called biomedical science departments)?
Patients go here immediately after surgery to be closely monitored as they wake up from anesthesia.
What is the PACU (Post-Anesthesia Care Unit)?
These outpatient facilities allow patients to have procedures like colonoscopies or cataract surgeries without being admitted to the hospital.
What are Ambulatory Surgery Centers (ASCs)
This team helps patients transition out of the hospital by arranging home health, rehab, or follow-up care.
What is Case Management?
Often called the “air traffic controllers” of a hospital unit, these staff manage the front desk, answer phones, coordinate patient admissions and discharges, and keep the unit running smoothly
What is a Health Unit Coordinator (HUC)?
These three acronyms describe the stages of physician education.
What are UME, GME, and CME? (Undergraduate, Graduate, and Continuing Medical Education.)