Surgery is the medical specialty that treats diseases or injuries by operative manual and instrumental treatment.

Overall goal
To be a centre of excellence in the provision of surgical services.

Objectives

1. To ensure that patients receive/get quality surgical and surgical care through prompt surgical interventions, utilization of nursing process and primary nursing, infection and infection prevention control measures.

2. To participate in student teaching and other groups of learners.

3. Participate in skills and knowledge improvement by conducting clinical audits and participation in Continuous Medical Education (CME).

The department comprises of five areas namely;

1. Surgical wards

2. Orthopedic wards

3. Ophthalmology ward, eye out-patient clinic and Theatre

4. ENT outpatient clinic and

5. CSSD –Central Sterile Supplies Department

The department attends to patients from the North Rift Region, Western Kenya, parts of Eastern Uganda and Southern Sudan.

Achievements

The department has been able to achieve its goals through a good working relationship with other departments e.g. laboratory, physiotherapy, occupational therapy, nutrition, social work, theatres and other personnel with the Hospital and the Moi University, School of Medicine.

The department has participated and helped in successful implementation of international missions e.g. Operation Smile and Operation Ear Drop. Others include; successful Laparoscopic surgeries and Kidney transplant.

The department has highly skilled and experienced surgeons who double as lecturers at the School of Medicine.
It has different areas of surgery some of which include; general surgery, orthopaedic surgery, cardiothoracic surgery, paediatric surgery, Neuro surgery and plastic surgery.

The department has assigned special clinic days such as; the theatre (operation), elective admission days, major ward round days and weekly calls which have been enhanced by functional firms.
The department has 106 nurses, 3 medical officers and several medical and clinical officers and interns. We also train students from the University of East Africa, Baraton, Moi University, Kenya Medical Training Centre (KMTC) and the ECN upgrading programme.
So far, the department has 125 beds that have been distributed as follows; ophthalmology (22), male orthopaedics (12), male surgical (43) and female surgical (48).

Constraints
Due to its wide catchment area, the department experiences high bed occupancy of between 100%-150 %, this leads to overstraining of the available resources.
The female surgical wards require expansion since it currently accommodates female orthopaedics, female surgery, paediatric surgery and burns cases.