When will visitors be allowed back to St Mary’s Hospital to see their loved ones? That was the question put to the Isle of Wight NHS Trust at a meeting this week following a rise in complaints.
Measures were put in place at St Mary’s Hospital in Newport before the first lockdown was enforced in March last year.
Only certain types of patients are allowed visitors including those most vulnerable or children – but even then the numbers are tightly controlled.
The Isle of Wight NHS Trust is still to fully lift restrictions 18 months later, after multiple lockdowns and waves of the virus, but is following national guidance.
Questions were raised at Monday’s Isle of Wight Council’s health and social care meeting as to when restrictions may be lifted after frustrations had been shared with councillors.
Speaking from personal experience, Councillor Clare Mosdell said she understood the measures were in place for COVID protection but they were damaging to the mental health of patients who may not know when they are going to be discharged. Cllr Mosdell said it was also distressing for those who want to visit unwell patients and give them support.
Island Echo knows of a number of cases where elderly individuals have gone weeks without seeing any visitors.
Lois Howell, the Isle of Wight NHS Trust’s director of governance and risk, said they were looking to introduce booked visiting slots, as had been installed at hospitals in Portsmouth. The slow introduction of visitors back again has however been paused, Ms Holwell said, due to the rise in COVID cases in the community and staff sickness.
It was a ‘risk balancing exercise’, she said, and something that ‘was very difficult’ to open up the hospital with the various different pressures.
Ms Howell said there are ways of getting things to loved ones through a drop-off point and family liaison officers to facilitate communication but complaints about the lack of visitation and communication have increased.
The use of security guards at St Mary’s front door, to control who comes in and out, was called ‘unwelcoming’ by Councillor Joe Robertson, who suggested clinical staff be used instead. The use of security guards also comes at a cost.
There were no clinical staff available to fill those positions, Ms Howell said, due to staffing struggles in other parts of the hospital. She apologised if they were intimidating.
By all accounts, not for a long time, most offices have been turned into wards, PPE for staff is running out, Isolation rules are a joke and that is mainly because management has screwed up big time. The people who are doing the real work are going off sick left, right and centre, and who can blame them, long hours, chaos. Just think what it will be like with all these new hutches being built.
Some thumbs downs for my comment, why? Only telling the truth. Maybe some hospital managers don’t like the truth out in the open, or maybe some of the people who think it is all a fake virus and refuse to have even one vaccination, or even wear a mask.
They will be off sick if you give them full pay I have seen this many time work places that offer full pay when off sick have more staff taking advantage off this cut sick pay see what happens
Good shout young man,
Also, why your at it, why not bring back Victorian work House’s ?
Or cut the minimum wage ?
I look back to January 2020 when my father was slowly leaving us at St Mary’s.
I never left his side throughout the day.
The last week 2 weeks I slept by his bedside( The last week at Mountbatten Hospice) I am still traumatized by his passing but the thought I could not have spent that time with him fills me with fear.
I am so sorry for all those people who have not been able to be with their loved one while in hospital, it’s so important.
I do understand how this virus has changed things but I still can not imagen how I could have left my father at the doors of the hospital.
Love to all who have had to do this. xx
I’m getting really hacked off with the ‘security guards’ being called intimidating and unwelcoming. They are mostly Steward. and are doing a very difficult job at the best of their abilities. All they are doing are enforcing the rules.
Putting clinical staff there ? It’s not one person at one door, is several doors and 12 hours a day. Hardly effective use of clinically trained staff. St Marys isn’t the only hospital to use door staff / marshals. Southampton does too. It’s not the staff at the door. It’s the rules that are an issue for people.
Your on about the ones who are no help at all only word they know is YOUR NOT COMING IN.
Come what may, and I don’t care what, there is absolutely no way that I am going into hospital for any reason at all. I would rather die at home, or anywhere, rather than go to hospital at the moment. End.
If all the staff go off sick because people are bringing the virus in and out of the hospital willy nilly who are going to look after the sick and dying
If visitors test regularly and prove to be negative then let them sit with a loved one. Even for half an hour. Staff must surely take tests so they can continue working. It’s cruel to deny a visit both to patients and loved ones.