THE countdown has begun to the biggest change in North Staffordshire emergency hospital care for nearly 50 years.

In exactly a month, the area waves goodbye to its cramped and crumbling A&E unit, which will then be boarded up ready for the bulldozers to move in.

Replacing it will be Britain's most state-of-the-art casualty department, hailed as the jewel in the crown in the £400 million superhospital makeover of the City General site in Hartshill.

The spectacular building is half a mile from the old Royal Infirmary.

But in equipment, systems, space, life-saving potential and sheer class, it may as well be light years away.

Bosses at the University Hospital of North Staffordshire yesterday marked the start of the final month before the long-awaited opening on March 15 by launching a scheme to tell people where to take their injuries and illnesses after that.

A quarter of a million flyers, cards and posters will be out across North Staffordshire in the coming weeks so that none of the average 250-plus patients a day needing emergency care are in any doubt where to go.

The awareness campaign was marked by a flight of the Midlands air ambulance to the new helipad created just a cricket pitch away from the A&E main entrance.

And tucked just inside its front doors is the crucial hi-tech resuscitation department, so impressive it already has the 10 consultants and more than 200 other staff eager to move in.

The new unit's arrival has been key to bringing one of three trauma centres in the West Midlands to the superhospital.

It means about four patients a week with the most horrific injuries will be flown directly from as far afield as the Welsh hills, Burton, the south Manchester stockbroker belt and south of Stafford.

The helipad's proximity to A&E is a far cry from its current Royal Infirmary location.

At present, critically-ill patients face a trolley journey along narrow, dimly-lit Victorian corridors to the casualty department.

Before that, the helipad was next to the ambulance station in Penkhull, forcing crews to manhandle stretchers across an often muddy field to get patients to hospital.

Hanley paramedic Ian Walley, aged 49, who has worked on the air ambulance for four years, said: "There is a golden hour between an incident and getting the patient to hospital, which gives the best chance of survival.

"Every minute you lose in the journey is critical.

"But here we will now be able to get people straight from the helicopter to resuscitation in under a minute, compared to the several minutes it takes at the moment down the long corridors."

A&E consultant Richard Hall, who has worked in the department for five years said: "The resuscitation room alone is fantastic.

"But to have it so close to the helipad and next door to our own imaging rooms will give a huge boost to how we can treat patients."