The department of Orthopaedic is the youngest department at patan hospital in terms of its establishment. Orthopaedics and Musculo-skeletal trauma became a separate department in the year 2002 only. Although Patan Hospital started functioning in the year 1982 with all major departments, there was no orthopaedic surgeon in the Hospital until 1998 .Minor ailments of orthopaedics was provided by the general surgeons and all major and complicated orthopaedics problems including large number of trauma were transferred to other hospitals.

The orthopaedic department has eight orthopaedic surgeons, all with master’s degree in orthopaedic surgery (MS orthopaedics),  3-4 postgraduate residents getting  training in orthopaedics from NAMS and TUTH and 1-2 intern doctors.

Almost all kind of surgeries are performed by the department including spine surgery, pediatric surgery, hand surgery, arthroscopic surgery. Joint replacement surgery is done in collaboration with a visiting surgeon, but in near future, the department is planning to perform this surgery on a routine basis without anybody else’s help. All kinds of trauma surgery is performed using the latest technique of fracture fixation like MIPO technique and AO fixation of fractures.

There is a regular academic session for the benefit of all the doctors of the department. With the help of the hospital, the department sends its doctors regularly on short term training outside Nepal. National Academy Of Medical Sciences (NAMS) and Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital (TUTH) have recognized the department as a training centre for orthopaedics and have a regular posting of its residents for a short term training.

                           
The department is now working towards developing sub-specialities like : Replacement Surgery, Spine Surgery, Arthroscopic Surgery, Hand Surgery, etc. although a significant amount of these surgeries are already been carried out at present also. Many of the departmental doctors have already gone for short term training on these subjects and it is the policy of the department not to put burden on the hospital financially to train the departmental doctors except giving them study leave. The arrangement for training is done as much as possible on personal and departmental effort.