The Center uses a team approach, involving surgeons, nursing staff and physical therapy staff. Featuring eight private suites designed to create a calm, healing environment with the patient's comfort in mind, the Center is small enough to provide personal attention to every patient. Each room features a lounger, a refrigerator and other amenities not normally available during a hospital stay.

The Road to Recovery
The road to recovery begins long before a patient's admission to the hospital.

Before ever checking in for their procedure, patients are provided with preoperative education, tours of the unit and personal meetings with their therapists and nurses. The dedicated team of nurses and physical therapists only takes care of orthopaedic patients, allowing them to meet the special needs of orthopaedic patients.

To ensure the Center's continued high standards in patient care, each patient is given a satisfaction survey upon discharge and again six weeks after surgery to rate how they felt about their hospital stay and recovery from surgery. The Center uses the survey to monitor preoperative admission information, how courteous and knowledgeable the staff was, the cleanliness of rooms, the rating of equipment, the management of the patient's pain, the transition from hospital to outpatient setting and how patients rate their progress following surgery.

In the first 10 months the Center for Joint Surgery was open, patient satisfaction in all categories has consistently ranged between 97 and 100 percent. Nearly 170 patients were cared for in the first 10 months, and the numbers continue to grow. 

The Latest Advances
Atlantic General Hospital provides the latest in technological advances in orthopaedic surgery, including procedures such as total joint replacement utilizing new alternate bearing materials such as ceramic and Oxinium implants. Many other orthopaedic surgical procedures, including arthroscopic surgery of the knee, hip, and shoulder; ligament reconstruction of the knee; rotator cuff surgery of the shoulder; shoulder replacement surgery; and cartilage transplant surgery are performed at Atlantic General.
The Center for Joint Surgery strives to provide education to the community through weekly tours of the Joint Center (for patients who are scheduled for surgery and for those who may be contemplating surgery) and monthly lectures by the surgeons of Atlantic Orthopaedics at the hospital and other area locations. The Center also sponsors a monthly arthritis support group at the Ocean Pines Library.

For a tour of the Center for Joint Surgery at Atlantic General Hospital, contact Joyce Wingate, the Joint Center's clinical leader, by e-mail or at (410) 641-9131.