n line with the national guidance on hospital visiting, risk assessments are in place for all our wards to ensure the ongoing safety of patients, visitors and staff. In the case of the nightingale wards at Glasgow Royal Infirmary, our infection control and clinical teams have met to review visiting and they have recommended the temporary move to essential visiting for these wards.
This is based on particular issues within the nightingale wards with open accommodation where separation of patients and their visitors is more challenging and social distancing and other mitigations against COVID are more difficult to observe. Glasgow Royal Infirmary has also experienced an increase in COVID-19 hospital admissions.
This decision has not been taken lightly, but has been put in place to help protect patients, visitors and staff.
The ‘essential visiting arrangements’ will be applied flexibly and compassionately and each patient’s needs considered on their own merits. Carers, those providing essential care or emotional support or spiritual care are not considered to be visitors and may continue to visit a patient in hospital.
Maternity wards are unaffected by the changes, and normal visiting continues to take place there, and all other wards at GRI.
Jennifer Rodgers, Deputy Nurse Director, said: “This has been a difficult decision, but it is essential to help protect our patients, visitors and staff. We recognise how difficult this for patients and the people that matter most to them and we will keep this under close review so that we can return to person centred visiting as soon as possible.
“For those who plan to visit a relative at Glasgow Royal Infirmary and are unsure of what visiting guidelines apply, please either call the ward or go to our website where you will find more information.
“If you are visiting any of our hospitals, we strongly recommend that you have a Voluntary Lateral Flow Test prior to visiting and then undertake these twice per week for as long as you are a visitor.”
Background
Examples of essential visitors include the following situations:
- a person receiving end-of-life care, to enable them to spend meaningful time with those who matter to them in their final days, weeks or months
- to support someone with a mental health issue, or dementia, or a learning disability or autism, where not being present would cause the patient to be distressed
Essential visiting will come into effect from 8pm tonight (27 August 2021) for the following wards:
| Ward 3 | Ward 17/31 | Ward 29 |
| Ward 4 | Ward 18 | Ward 32 |
| Ward 5 | Ward 19 | Ward 33 |
| Ward 7/16 | Ward 20 | Ward 35 |
| Ward 8 | Ward 21 | Ward 36 |
| Ward 9 | Ward 24 | Ward 38 |
| Ward 10 | Ward 26 | Ward 39 |
| Ward 12 | Ward 27 |
Essential visiting is already in place for the wards listed below:
| Ward 47a | Ward 11 |
| Ward 52 | Ward 15/28 |
| Ward 48 | Ward 23 |
| Ward 6 | Ward 30 |
ENDS