Ministry of Defence Hospital Unit (MDHU)

The Trust is immensely proud of its military associations, with Queen Alexandra Hospital, Cosham, hosting the country’s largest Ministry of Defence Hospital Units (MDHU).

This means that the Trust has wider responsibilities than standard NHS organisations. We must ensure that our military staff, who account for 5% of the Trust’s total workforce, are given appropriate clinical experience to help them when they are deployed around the world.

MDHU Portsmouth was established on 1 April 2005 and is formed of Army, Royal Navy and Royal Air Force personnel. Servicemen and women take up a variety of medical posts including consultants, nurses and lab support staff.

Our hospital staff on the frontline in Afghanistan

Since the deployment of the British Armed Forces to Southern Afghanistan, members of the Queen Alexandra Royal Naval Nursing Service, Queen Alexandra Royal Army Nursing Corps, Princess Mary’s Royal Air Force Nursing Service and the Royal Army Medical Corps have been deployed to Helmand Province. 

In 2011/12 a total of 81 MDHU personnel will have been deployed on operational tours in Afghanistan.  Together they have cared for sick and wounded personnel from the armed forces, members of the Afghan National army and police force, international troops and civilians who may have been injured as a result of suicide bombings or military operations. The tri service medical group are collectively called the Joint Force Med Group.

Lieutenant Colonel Simon Hunter is a consultant in the Trust’s Emergency Department. He was deployed for 10 weeks to Camp Bastion in Afghanistan in November 2009. Simon was the leader of a Medical Emergency Response Team, a four-person team consisting of a doctor, a nurse and two paramedics. This was Simon’s sixth deployment. He said: “The trauma cases we saw on this deployment were worse than I had seen before and we had to make some tough decisions.

“We take the Emergency Department to those who need it, irrespective of whether fighting is still going on around us. We make a big difference - for example we pick up injured children and give them medical care that they would not normally have and transfer them to trauma hospitals in the region.” His frontline experience also benefits the Trust: “We use the innovations that we developed under extreme pressures in the field back in Portsmouth.”

For further information click on the presentation in ‘related documents’ at the side of the page.