Hospital Trusts Still Restricting Visits

[nojudgementhere]

Apparently hospital trusts are still going to be banning/limiting visitors because of Covid. Anyone else feeling worried about this and hoping the rules are relaxed soon?

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/02/18/every-hospital-trust-england-limiting-visitors-despite-move/

I'm due for an op next week and would much rather have limited visitors my damn inlaws who dont believe in COVID as I don't want to catch COVID on top of everything else and every hospital will be full of folk with coexisting illnesses. I will catch up with relatives via my phone after op.

If its an EOL situation hospitals should be more flexible.

Really hope hospitals continue restrictions - if I was I’ll enough to be admitted I really wouldn’t want to be a sitting target to covid too.

*ill

I do hope hospital keep restricting, until actual cases goes down.
Just because the gov decided they can drop restrictions, it doesn't mean it's safe for people who needs hospital treatment.

Even with the restrictions Covid transmission has been a huge issue in hospitals which makes me wonder whether all the sacrifices have been worth it. My nan relied massively on family support when she was involved in a serious road accident prior to Covid, and I'm not sure she would have recovered as well (or at all) if that help and emotional connection had not been there. There were other patients on her ward who were in a terrible way, falling out of bed, calling out hopelessly for water and being ignored for long lengths of time, which really alarmed me. I get that visits should possibly be limited but the thought of being cut off from my loved ones when either they or me are at our most vulnerable absolutely terrifies me.

I hope they continue and not follow the government.., not heard of any science or medical advise supporting our government to drop all measures.

7 year old Adalyn Graviss died last Monday 72 hours after testing pos no underlining conditions . It’s madness to drop isolating and testing . How schools will go I’ve no idea but it’s needs to be kept of wards .

@CarrieBlue

Really hope hospitals continue restrictions - if I was I’ll enough to be admitted I really wouldn’t want to be a sitting target to covid too.

I’ve been in hospital recently. Minimal visitors has been incredibly isolating and detrimental to my mental health, as if being physically unwell isn’t bad enough!

Sorry to hear that @Mickarooni and I hope you're feeling a bit better now. 💐It must make communication so difficult if the person in hospital is too unwell to speak on the phone as I'd imagine the staff aren't too keen on relatives calling for updates all the time. I'm totally supportive of testing/masks/visiting hours etc. as obviously reducing transmission is really important, but some of the restrictions seem unecessarily cruel and OTT now.

Thank you. :) I’m home now and I fully understand why visiting is restricted and my visitors are happy to test, wear masks and distance and limit visiting. It’s just so isolating in hospital and I’m not even vulnerable. For those who are confused or have dementia or other needs - it’s much harder. For me, its the little things like being fed up of drinking lukewarm tap water for days on end when I fancy some Diet Coke. Obviously this is only minor but it all adds up.

Blanket visiting restrictions are horribly detrimental for people who have carers or need extra support. There needs to be much better balance, although I agree the whole open-all-hours thing was getting ridiculous pre-Covid.

@Mickaroonimi I agree it’s incredibly isolating. Had a short stint in hospital in July for myself with suspected PE and again in December with my newborn to have phototherapy. Partner was only allowed up for 45 minutes in July, he was allowed up more in December but we have 2 other kids at home so wasn’t up as much as he liked so spent the majority of it on my own. It would of been a god send for my mum to be able to come up in December just as moral support. I get not having a revolving door of visitors and I also understand not allowing children on wards (as much as I wanted my kids to come up) as testing them is significantly harder and getting them to wear masks is also a challenge, but such restrictions on visits can be really detrimental on patients, particularly when there’s lots of unknowns about what’s going on, no-one to discuss tests and treatments with and so forth.

We lifted restrictions and we had so many issues with relatives arguing because we asked them to stay with relatives and not wander around. We had some trying to sneak in extra relatives. On top of that several caused Covid outbreaks…knowingly coming in with covid. Hospitals cannot afford to have outbreaks when patients are already sick.

@itsjustnotok - That does sound really bad and unreasonable behaviour to be fair. Maybe there could be strict guidelines that visitors have to agree to before arriving onsite and if they break these rules (i.e. wandering off/being disrepectful to staff/visiting while obviously symptomatic) then they lose visiting rights in the future? Sounds like it might be a little overcomplicated but it seems wrong that everyone should suffer because of the bad behaviour of a (hopefully) small minority.

I’d prefer no visitors, but then I am an antisocial cow anyway, and worse when I’m sick!

@nojudgementhere I agree that it must be awful to be separated from loved ones in times of illness but I think restrictions such as visiting restricted, compulsory masks and attending appointments alone will be around for a long time.
I also think they will be more crucial if free testing and isolation is dropped.
Sick people in hospital do not need Covid on top

Here visitors have to book in and it's just one a day, but at least it's something.

@nojudgementhere the problem with that is firstly that people lie. You would not believe the number of people who tell our admin team that no, they have no symptoms at all. And then tell the clinician that they've been coughing for days. And secondly then the ward staff have to enforce it and have the inevitable arguments with relatives. Who are, almost by definition, the entitled types anyway because otherwise they wouldn't have broken the rules. Noone has the time and blood pressure for that!

Out trust recently had to change all door codes as some visitors got hold of the ward code and broke in at night to see their relative.
On a covid ward.

Our trust has always allowed visitors for children, eol, dementia and people with carers.
Only time said no is when ward has actually been closed to covid, but then we have used our common sense and still allowed our vulnerable patients a visitor.
Rule is simple . 1 named visitor for entire stay.
Families find it hard to decide who that named person is and difficult when there's family disputes.
But so far so good.

It's so hard. My mum was in hospital recently and it was only through negotiation that we were allowed to visit. When time is limited, it's very hard to be kept apart from the ones you love - even if you understand the reasons for it, and the need for hospitals to consider all the patients in their care. She's in a hospice now and while it's still limited, there's so much better flexibility.

I think there is an importance in having a visitor for people who are lonely. A visitor can boost morale and also take some for the caring burden away from nurses. However, I have spent a few weeks on ward accompanying my child and it is so much more relaxing when extra visitors aren’t allowed. Not having a constant stream of prying eyes, noisy chattering and groups squeezing into bays that aren’t big enough was great. In a weird way, it made the ward feel more like home without external people coming and going.

My trust has allowed visiting for months now, one person (same visitor) one hour per day pre booked. This allows us to keep our bays from getting to crowded. We also allow flexible visiting for EOL/dementia/carers etc. However we get so many people breaking this it's exhausting, taking masks off, wandering about, more than one visitor.

We still have a high number of covid patients (none in ITU) and get frequent pop ups which puts us back to square one. We had one visitor come in who was waiting for PCR results which were subsequently positive. I can't tell you the extra work that cost us.

We are aware that we now have more phone calls and we don't mind, we do our best to answer these.

Listen to this weeks You Me and the Big C podcast and you will understand and respect the visiting rules. It really brought it home to me.

@LittleGungHo

Listen to this weeks You Me and the Big C podcast and you will understand and respect the visiting rules. It really brought it home to me.

I am not a podcast person but I wanted to say my personal experience of being in hospital without any visitors or very restrictive was awful. I observed some really upsetting things.