The Minister was accompanied by Assistant Minister Sigurjón Jónsson, Guðlaug Einarsdóttir, Director of Hospitals and Special Services, Helga Harðardóttir, Specialist in the Office of Hospitals and Special Services and Margrét Erlendsdóttir, Information Officer of the Ministry.

Staff gathered to celebrate the opening of the surgical institution and the major milestone reached in the past 15 months with a long-awaited end to the restructuring of premises and equipment at the Faculty of Hand Medicine and Pharmaceutical Sciences, which has now been completed just 70 years after the hospital in Akranes began operation.

The Minister of Health addressed the gathering and the director reviewed the timeline of the project in language and pictures. The cases were also addressed by Stefán Þorvaldsson, Chief Medical Officer, Birna Katrín Hallsdóttir, Head of the Faculty of Hand Medicine and Björn Gunnarsson, Head of the Faculty of Surgery and Anaesthesia.

In the case of Jóhanna F. Jóhannesdóttir, the director of HVE, it was revealed that a long-awaited and important milestone had been reached in the end improvement of the premises at HVE in Akranes. She thanked the Minister of Health and HRN officials for their support in moving forward with the project and the trust that former Minister of Health Svandís Svavarsdóttir showed the institute by entrusting HVE with increased tasks and deciding on a project that involved the installation of an additional operating room in Akranes that can handle up to 430 operations per year, as stated in the announcement on the Ministry website on 31 August 2021. See .

She also thanked the board of the West Iceland Healthcare Authority for its invaluable support in recent years, specifically mentioning the organisation's unique initiative, which started in 2019 with a roundup of companies, individuals and organisations in the West of Iceland, which provided the organisation with a total of 35 new beds. She also named the Akranes Lions Club, which has been very supportive of the operation since the club's equipment fund was established in 1958 and has contributed to the success of equipping the hospital with better equipment options.

The CEO praised the employees for their positive attitude, patience and solidarity throughout the difficult construction period and said that they had made every effort to make it work in challenging circumstances.

She also praised the particularly dynamic team at the maintenance and technical department for their work and said without them it had not gone so well.

After the talks, meeting manager Þura B. Hreinsdóttir invited the attendees to tour the new operating theatre, look in on the inpatient wards and accept the provisions in the dining room.

The staff of the surgery and anaesthesia department had prepared the reception well and dressed everyone in appropriate protective clothing i.e. shoes, long-sleeved gowns and hats on arrival. The attendees were given a good guide to the ward, inspected the new operating theatre and the facilities for equipment washing, laundering etc. The orthopaedic surgeons Sverrir Þór Kiernan and Jón Ingvar Ragnarsson also taught the Minister of Health and others about the diverse tools and tools used in joint replacement surgery. The additional space provided by raising the roof on part of the department has completely changed all working facilities, as the space that was under soured and largely uninhabitable from the beginning created the possibility of furnishing rooms for clean and dirty wash, as well as warehouses and facilities for workers.

About the project

A comprehensive renovation of the Faculty of Hand Medicine (565 square meters at 2nd floor) and the Faculty of Medicine (575 square meters at 3rd floor) was initiated at the end of May 2021. Height). Work had been underway for a long time to achieve improvements in the wards with the needs of patients and improved working facilities of the employees in mind. The interior and layout of the Faculty of Hand Medicine which opened nearly 54 years ago and the Faculty of Medicine which opened 45 years ago were largely unchanged from the outset, so it was natural that the premises would no longer be in step with the development of the business and the needs of the modern world. But living and working facilities are one of the more demanding needs today and help attract and retain staff.

The past 15 months have been a busy one and many employees will remember. The organization was pushed and the employees had to think outside the box and seek solutions when it was necessary to move the departments to the interior, put some of the equipment in a storage unit in the center and move it to a smaller place.

At the end of May 2021, the Faculty of Medicine moved to the waiting room premises in the oldest wing of the hospital, where they remained for nearly 7 months in a narrow building and only 11 berths could be reasonably accommodated, although sometimes there were more spaces. Operations at the Faculty of Hand Medicine were moved to the Women's Department corridor at the end of May 2021, where the faculties were jointly operated for 7 months with 10 beds instead of 20, with the effect of reducing surgical procedures and lengthening waiting lists. At the end of the year, the Faculty of Hand Medicine then moved to the waiting room and remained there until the relocated premises were moved on 1 April, after 10 months'' camping.

Since the beginning of October 2021, a new operating room has been hard to install, many professionals, each with their own work, have had to share a relatively small space at the end of the operating ward which was closed from another area of the operating room corridor. Various things in the process went slower than expected and somewhat delayed the completion of the operating room, but the original timeline was that the operating room could be opened in April, most of which was caused by uncontrollable outside factors related to the covid epidemic, such as the time slot and production of supplies, and the time slot of medical equipment is much longer than before.

The period of construction and disruption due to the renovation of the inpatient units was truly difficult, but it helped how much all collaboration with the inpatient departments went well. A special thanks goes to Halldór B. Hallgrímsson, head of the maintenance and technical department in charge of the construction and was extremely good at organising and directing the projects of the inpatient wards and operating theatre from the first day. Contractors involved in the project deserve credit for consideration and flexibility and various transfers due to the existing operations in the building.

Finally,

The next step is to begin operations in the new operating theatre this week. The professionals involved in the service of patients who undergo hip and knee replacements have begun work on changing the procedures for hip and knee replacements, procedures for performing surgery, stay and follow-up in order to increase the number of joint replacement operations, and will present them in more detail.