The Hospital Universitario Ramón y Cajal is a public general hospital located in the Valverde neighborhood, in

Madrid Madrid ( , ) is the capital and most populous city of Spain. The city has almost 3.4 million inhabitants and a Madrid metropolitan area, metropolitan area population of approximately 6.7 million. It is the Largest cities of the Europ ...

, Spain, part of the hospital network of the

Servicio Madrileño de Salud The Madrilenian Health Service ( es, Servicio Madrileño de Salud, SERMAS) is the body responsible for the system of public health services in the Community of Madrid. The SERMAS was created in 2001, as the functions and services provided by the ...

. It is one of the healthcare institutions associated to the

University of Alcalá The University of Alcalá ( es, Universidad de Alcalá) is a public university located in Alcalá de Henares, a city 35 km (22 miles) northeast of Madrid in Spain and also the third-largest city of the region. It was founded in 1293 as a ...

for the purpose of clinical internship.

History

Named after

Santiago Ramón y Cajal Santiago Ramón y Cajal (; 1 May 1852 – 17 October 1934) was a Spanish neuroscientist, pathologist, and histologist specializing in neuroanatomy and the central nervous system. He and Camillo Golgi received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Me ...

, it was opened on 18 October 1977, receiving the nickname of (el) ''piramidón''. It was criticised back then because of its location, cost and size. It developed the first service in Spain for pediatric cardiology (1977) and the first unit of cardiac rehabilitation (1979). Aside from the teaching and medical attention features, it is noted by its research prowess (the first in the region in scientific research production), particularly in the scope of

clinical microbiology Medical microbiology, the large subset of microbiology that is applied to medicine, is a branch of medical science concerned with the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of infectious diseases. In addition, this field of science studies various ...

and

infectious disease An infection is the invasion of tissues by pathogens, their multiplication, and the reaction of host tissues to the infectious agent and the toxins they produce. An infectious disease, also known as a transmissible disease or communicable di ...

s. As of 2017 it has 901 beds. At the peak of the COVID-19 pandemia in Madrid, in March and April 2020, the hospital had 994 beds occupied by patients of COVID-19.

References

Buildings and structures in Fuencarral-El Pardo District, Madrid Ramon y Cajal {{Spain-hospital-stub