AS PART of the NHS’ response to the coronavirus (COVID-19) to protect patients, staff, volunteers and visitors, Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has introduced new rules on the number of visitors who can enter its wards to visit an inpatient.
This applies to all visitors and all wards at Bradford Royal Infirmary, St Luke’s Hospital, Westbourne Green and Westwood Park community hospitals.
Mel Pickup, Chief Executive of Bradford Teaching Hospitals, said: “We do understand that these new rules may be hard to follow, and we know that many people want to attend hospital with other friends and family to show their respects, to pray and to offer their support.
“However, coronavirus is a serious infectious disease and we must do everything we can to slow the spread of the disease. This means reducing the number of people who gather in hospital. We will do our best to help anyone who wishes to communicate via an alternative method such as using their mobile phone/face time.
“I’d like to thank everyone for their support and understanding, and for helping to keep our hospital environment as safe as possible for all our patients, visitors and staff during this period.”
The hospital chaplaincy team will be available, on request, to support all faith, religious and spiritual requirements, including Christian and Muslim. In putting these arrangements in place the Trust has consulted community stakeholders including Bradford Council for Mosques and its advising scholar Mufti Zubair Butt.
The restrictions, which have taken immediate effect, are as below:
- only ONE VISITOR PER BED will be allowed on the hospital wards.
- once the visitor has completed their visit, other visitors will not be permitted to swap places. Instead, other family members or friends should arrange between them to make a separate visit at a different time.
- no children (anyone under the age of 18) are allowed to visit on the wards.
- family, friends and other well-wishers should not gather in the hospital, as this increases the risk of infection.
- all visitors should follow good hygiene practice (wash their hands before and after visiting, use hand gels on the ward). Please do not visit if you have flu-like symptoms or coughs, colds or a high temperature.
- there will be some areas of the hospital where patients are being kept in isolation, for their own wellbeing and to protect other patients and staff. For these patients we may not be able to allow any visitors at all, though we will try if at all possible to enable visiting.
ENDS
For further media information, please contact communications@bthft.nhs.uk or call 01274 383901.
Note to Editors:
- Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust:
Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust is responsible for providing hospital services for the people of Bradford and communities across Yorkshire. We serve a core population of around 500,000 and provide specialist services for 1.1 million people.
Our 5,500 staff work over several sites, including Bradford Royal Infirmary, which provides the majority of inpatient services, and St Luke’s Hospital, which predominantly provides outpatient and rehabilitation services. We also manage local community hospitals at Westwood Park, Westbourne Green, and Eccleshill.
In early 2017, a new £28 million wing opened at Bradford Royal Infirmary, part of a £75m investment to improve patient care across our hospitals over a five-year period. It provides world-class facilities for elderly care, children’s services, a state-of-the-art intensive care unit with increased single-room provision and a retail concourse.
The new wing is a continuation of our work to improve patient experience after our new £2 million neonatal unit officially opened in January 2015. Our maternity services were recently shortlisted for the Royal College of Midwives’ (RCM) Midwifery Service of the Year Award, recognising excellence and innovation in the provision of maternity care.
In 2017, we also completed a £2m refurbishment of our Emergency Department (ED) as part of an ambitious vision to create a more efficient acute medicine service for the people of Bradford. It has been designed to provide a slicker and more efficient service, with faster senior clinical involvement at an early stage in the patient pathway.
As a teaching hospital, we are at the forefront of education and development in healthcare, and have an excellent reputation for research performance. We are one of the leading centres in conducting applied research in the country, particularly in quality and safety, elderly care and rehabilitation.
The Trust is home to the Bradford Institute for Health Research (BIHR) where researchers have led the development, validation and implementation of the award-winning Bradford Electronic Frailty Index (eFI) which helps calculate an elderly person’s risk of disability, impairment, falls and complications of chronic diseases, as well as their diminishing independence and capability. This is now being used by 98% of all GPs across the country.
Our award-winning Ophthalmology department is home to numerous worldwide clinical trials taking the lead in eye care research and we are one of only three sites in the United Kingdom to be enlisted in the Perioperative Enhanced Recovery Hip Fracture Care of Patients with Dementia (PERFECTED) study, which will investigate how the NHS can introduce better standards of care to improve outcomes for people with dementia.
The Trust has its own Bradford Hospitals Charity: https://bradfordhospitalscharity.org/
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For more information please visit www.bradfordhospitals.nhs.uk