The old hospital at NithbankThe old hospital at Bankend Road
The hospital has its origins in a small facility at Mill Hole in Burns Street in central Dumfries which opened as the Dumfries Infirmary in 1776.[2]
The hospital moved to High Dock in 1778 before becoming the Dumfries and Galloway Infirmary in 1785 and the Dumfries and Galloway Royal Infirmary in 1807.[2] Dr William Scott administered sulphuric ether, in the first use of anesthetics in the United Kingdom, at the High Dock facility in 1846.[3] The High Dock facility has since been demolished.[3]
The hospital relocated to a new building at Nithbank which was designed by John Starforth, completed in 1873 and was extended in 1897.[2] The hospital joined the National Health Service in 1948.[2] The old Nithbank facility was subsequently used to accommodate the offices of NHS Dumfries and Galloway.[4]
The hospital moved again this time to a facility at Bankend Road, which was designed by Boswell, Mitchell & Johnston and opened by the Queen in 1975.[5] A cancer care centre was opened by Princess Alexandra in 2003.[5] The old Bankend Road facility continues to be used as the Mountainhall Treatment Centre.[6]
In 2012 it was announced that a new 350-bed hospital would be built on the A75 close to the Garroch roundabout.[7] It was procured under a Private Finance Initiative contract in March 2015.[8] The hospital was designed by Ryder Architecture and NBBJ[9] and built by Laing O'Rourke[8] at a cost of £213 million.[10] The new hospital was officially opened by the Princess Royal in July 2018.[11]
The hospital serves the town of Dumfries and the catchment area of South West Scotland with a population of c.150,000.[12] It is made up entirely of single rooms, 344 of them, each with a computer point to allow real-time updating of patient records.[1]
