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Care Opinion

Testing procedure for visitors feels counter-productive

Posted By Gem79

"Testing procedure for visitors feels counter-productive"

About: Tameside General Hospital / General medicine

(as a relative),

The visiting process at this hospital makes no sense and just makes and an already anxious family of a patient more stressed.

My dad was admitted to Tameside having suffered a stroke. This was obviously extremely distressing for both him and his family. I do understand that we may still have to have some restrictions when allowing visitors due to COVID but the procedures they have in place here feel counter-productive.

Having visitors held in the entrance hall to perform LFT tests prior to visiting seems wrong. Surely the sensible thing to do is for the visitor to test before you leave home... if a person was to test positive in this area you have potentially just infected the other people waiting there too?

You have a central phone number to book the appointment which is busy and sometimes doesn’t get answered for a while. Going from one central place to book in for your appointment to then have to walk across the hospital site to the ward you are visiting is encouraging people moving around the hospital unnecessarily.

I know other hospitals do not have this procedure for visitors. Booking an appointment directly with the ward, encouraging LFT before going to the hospital and wearing masks whilst visiting feel like appropriate measures and ones that have been adopted in other trusts.

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Responses

Response from Sue Rothwell, Assistant Chief Nurse, Corporate Nursing and Integrated Governance, Tameside and Glossop Integrated Care NHS Foundation Trust 2 years ago
Sue Rothwell
Assistant Chief Nurse, Corporate Nursing and Integrated Governance,
Tameside and Glossop Integrated Care NHS Foundation Trust

Submitted on 22/03/2022 at 17:25
Published on Care Opinion at 17:25

Thank you for sharing your comments regarding the current visiting arrangements at Tameside Hospital. I was very sorry to read that your dad has experienced a stroke as I appreciate this must have been a very distressing time for him and your family. The Hospital is currently reviewing our visiting arrangements and your feedback is very useful in helping us understand what is working well and what can be changed. Like all NHS Hospitals we have had to balance the reintroduction of general visiting with infection, prevention and control practices. Therefore we have offered to support visitors with offering a lateral flow test before their appointment. This is currently a short term measure in response to infection rates in the local community. However this is being reviewed to make booking a visit as easy as possible, and your comments will be used to help us agree next steps, in line with other feedback from patients and their families.

In relation to booking visits, whilst we have introduced a central booking line to support the booking of visits, we have also given additional staff access to this should they need to book a visit for someone they are talking to. Again we are looking at additional options to help expand the opportunities for the bookings of visits to help inform our future plans. If you would like to discuss this further, or have any other ideas you would like to share, please contact patient.experience@tgh.nhs.uk and we would be happy to discuss this in more detail with you. Thank you again for providing your comments.

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