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Livewell Southwest is open and here for you

by | 5th November 2020 | News

As the country moves into another period of national restrictions, we want to assure you that Livewell Southwest remains open and here to support you..

We firstly want to thank the public for their continued support during this time and for your efforts in helping to keep us safe so that we can continue to care for you.

The safety and wellbeing of our staff, patients, service users and visitors remains our priority and so we have taken measures to protect you if you are using our services or visiting our sites.

Earlier this year we launched our Livewell Connect app to help continue to support to people throughout the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond via virtual consultations.

Since March, we’ve delivered more than 12,000 virtual appointments and supported many more of you with telephone appointments too.

While we are delivering some services differently, there will still be times where we need to see you face to face and we will continue to do so during this lockdown.

If you have an appointment with one of our services, please attend unless you have symptoms of COVID-19 which are

  • a high temperature,
  • a new continuous cough,
  • loss or change to your sense of taste or smell;
  • or if you are isolating due to having COVID-19 symptoms or are living with someone who is isolating.

If you are unable to attend your appointment for this reason or any other reason or you have any questions or concerns, please call the number on your appointment letter.

We have lots of infection control measures in place to keep you safe while at one of our sites, including hand gel and washing facilities, and we ask you to wear a face mask when attending an appointment and to observe social distancing measures throughout your visit

Please help protect yourselves, other patients and our staff by following these measures.

If you have a loved one being cared for in one of our inpatient areas, we are currently restricting visits although some of our wards are able to accommodate garden visits and visits to designated areas.

Where this is happening, there are strict hygiene and infection measures in place including asking visitors to adhere to social distancing guidelines, hand washing/hand gel facilities, personal protective equipment provisions, limitations around the number of visitors and rigorous cleaning of any furniture used.

We are particularly keen to support visitors for patients who are:

  • A patient receiving end of life care
  • Visiting those with a learning disability
  • Inpatients under the age of 18 years old (one parent/guardian only)
  • Exceptions may also be made for relatives collecting patients who have been discharged.

All visits will need to be pre-arranged by calling the ward/unit ahead of visiting and asking to speak to the matron/nurse in charge. Where visiting is not possible, the ward will try and offer other methods of keeping in touch such as Zoom, Face Time and the telephone.

Visits will be scheduled with a timeframe and for one visitor per patient. There may be circumstances where there will be exceptions to this, so please discuss with the matron/nurse in charge when you call.

As with attending for an appointment, visitors are required to wear a cloth face covering when at our sites and we would appreciate it this could be applied at the entrance to any of our sites.

Even under these circumstances you should not visit if you have symptoms of COVID-19. Additionally, if you live with someone who has symptoms you will need to stay at home for 14 days starting from the day the first person in your house developed symptoms and should not visit.

Dawn Slater, Director of People & Professionalism, said: “We’re really proud that during the last lockdown we were able to continue to support people in our community and a large part of that was down to the wonderful support of our communities and your dedication to following guidance which helped keep our staff safe.

“We want to reassure you that we still remain here to support you during this lockdown so please if you have an appointment with us, make sure that you attend and that you let us know of any concerns or issues that you have. You may be offered a virtual appointment with one of our teams which more than 12,000 of you have benefitted from so far.

“If anything does change, you will be contacted and we’ll also be sharing any updates on our website and social media channels.”