About Whittall Street Clinic

We provide a comprehensive, free and confidential sexual health service, including screening for sexually transmitted diseases, HIV testing, sexual health information, clinics dedicated for young people, contraception sessions and counselling.

To make an appointment at the clinic, telephone 0121 237 5700. 

 

Whittall Street Clinic was originally set up in 1990. Prior to that, however, it was known as 'Ward 19' or the 'Special Clinic' and was part of the General Hospital (now Birmingham Children's Hospital).

 

We have in the region of 120 staff working for us at Whittall Street Clinic and Selly Oak Hospital. There are nine consultants, approximately twenty-five doctors, a nursing team of around sixty-five and a management / clerical team of around thirty.

 

Consultants manage our more complex patients and act as a source of expertise for the other clinic staff to refer to.

The doctors at Whittall Street Clinic diagnose, treat and manage symptomatic patients.

We have a large nursing team at Whittall Street Clinic. As part of patient care, nursing staff examine patients, perform different kinds of patient testing, give test results, and can treat some infections, including Hepatitis B and Syphilis, and prescribe emergency hormonal contraception (also known as the morning-after pill). Nurses can also provide HIV test discussion for before and after your test. Our satellite clinics are mostly nurse-led; the satellite clinics are able to provide sexual health services further across the community. Some nurses are trained to deal with more types of treatment or testing than others, but all of our nurses are constantly training to add to their skills and gain further qualifications.

Our team of Health Advisers deal with partner notification (where consent has been given), and give both pre-test and post-test discussion, including helping patients with complex or stressful problems, or delivering difficult news. They also see our younger patients to help establish if there are any concerns or worries.

Our admin team includes our Reception staff and Medical Secretaries, as well as the Finance / IT / Education and Management staff. The Medical Secretaries assist many of the managerial staff, particularly the Consultant Doctors. Administrative staff are responsible, for among other things, the administration of patient attendance such as welcoming and registering patients, preparing clinic notes and monitoring records. However, we will shortly be moving to Electronic Patient Records so there will be less handling of notes.

 

...week? Across all of our clinics, we see approximately 850 patients per week.

...month? 4000 patients per month.

...year? 48,000 patients per year.

 

We offer a free, confidential sexual health service to anybody attending. We are part of the Heart of Birmingham teaching Primary Care Trust, so the majority of our patients come from the whole Birmingham area and its neighbouring towns, but we see patients from all over the UK, and other countries as well.

 

The research team carry out sexual health research projects both at Selly Oak Hospital and Whittall Street Clinic. With the continued success and improvements in the academic department of sexual health and HIV, our research capacity has enabled us to:

 

The clinic runs routine clinical teaching sessions with consultants for our qualified nurses and medical students. There is also protected learning time for all staff. As we are part of a teaching Primary Care Trust, we often have medical students attending training and clinical sessions.

 

Before the clinic became known as 'Whittall Street' clinic, we were part of the General Hospital (now Birmingham Children's Hospital) and we were known as 'Ward 19' or the 'Special Clinic'. The clinic's current site was originally a motorcycle factory which was destroyed during WWII. The site was then unused until the clinic moved to its purpose-built premises from its original location in the General Hospital in 1990. The original building has been extended twice; in 1998 and 2005. The building was also renovated in 2009 to improve disabled access.

 

HIV protocol guidelines are set by BHIVA (the British HIV Association), GU guidelines are set by BASHH (British Association for Sexual Health and HIV). We have a local intranet that includes guidelines that we have developed for all activities in the clinics, as well as national guidelines that take BHIVA and BASHH into account.