COVID-19 Bulletin: Thursday 10 December

December 10, 2020

1. New: Visiting arrangements for inpatients

As you know, our Trust has restricted all visiting unless in exceptional circumstances, or for patients who are at end of life, those who lack mental capacity or children. The Women’s and Child Health Group now have new arrangements in place to allow limited visiting on postnatal wards, a partner to accompany scanning appointments and an additional birthing partner.

Due to the tier 3 restrictions for Birmingham and the Black Country that are a result of high community infections, rate of rise and impact on the NHS, we are retaining a ban on general visiting. Should our local area move to a tier 2 or tier 1 alert level then different visiting arrangements will apply. These arrangements are set out here.

We expect to relax the restrictions during 23 – 27 December to allow visiting, which would be in line with the tier 2 arrangements. We may change this decision depending on the numbers of COVID patients in the hospital, community cases and any hospital outbreaks, however we very much hope that we can allow limited visiting during this period to support our patients and their families. In these circumstances, the appropriate PPE must be worn by the visitor that will be supplied by the Trust. Each ward should only allow a maximum of 30% of the patients to have visitors at any one time, and each bay the same (a maximum of 30% visitors at any one time.) Patients who are nursed in beds in bays must not have visitors whilst their immediate patient neighbour has visitors.

2. New: Critical Care at City returns home

Following a week in temporary accommodation, staff on the critical care unit at City were delighted to return home this afternoon. It took a concerted effort from across the organisation to enable the move home to take place, after a thorough deep clean.

HCA Sharon Francis (pictured second from left) has worked for the Trust since 1994, and retires on New Year’s Eve, leaving the organisation at a pivotal time for the country also. Colleagues from Estates, Site Services and Medical Engineering pulled out all the stops to get critically ill patients back and we would like to thank all those concerned for their focus in achieving this in advance of the weekend. Pictured on the unit today from left to right are some of the many colleagues who have been hard at work over the last week focussed on returning patients to the unit: Housekeeper Mark Peterson, Sharon Francis HCA, Head of Medical Engineering Lawrence Barker, ICU Matron Vanessa Taylor, and Senior Sister Laura Harman.