An update from Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Trust

Accurate as of 21st April 2020- for latest Covid-19 guidance, visit the NHS website

Outpatient appointments

The majority of hospital outpatients appointments have moved to phone call or video consultations, to observe social distancing and keep patients and staff safe and well.

A small number of consultations are taking place face-to-face, and you will be advised by the hospital if you need to change your appointment arrangements.

If you have been given a hospital appointment, please attend as normal unless:

• You are advised otherwise by the hospital, or
• You have a fever and / or a new continuous cough

Both Queen Elizabeth and Lewisham University Hospitals are contacting patients directly if appointments do have to cancelled or rearranged, or if they are offering phone or video appointments.  If you do not hear from the hospital and do not have symptoms, please attend your appointment as normal.

We are asking patients to attend appointments alone, to protect staff and others from the risk of infection. If someone is bringing a patient to the hospital they are asked to drop them off and return when the patient is ready to go home.  If it is essential to have someone with a patient during an appointment, for example for mobility or communication needs, one person only is advised.

Hospital visiting arrangements

To protect patients, staff and visitors form the risk of infection, new visiting restrictions have been introduced to both University Hospital Lewisham and Queen Elizabeth Hospital.

Inpatients

Visitors are no longer allowed onto any of our adult inpatient wards and family members are asked to instead keep in touch with patients via telephone and video calls where possible. The Trust are working to enable additional video calls to keep patients in touch with their loved ones.

For infection control reasons, the Trust has had to make the difficult decision to allow just one visitor (with the agreement of the ward manager) for patients who are critically ill or near the end of their life.

Maternity and children 

Women attending for pregnancy scans are asked to come alone.  However, women in labour in maternity units will still be able to bring a birthing partner with them and children under 16 on inpatient wards will still be allowed one parent or adult visitor.

These have been incredibly difficult decisions to make, but the Trust feel these measures are necessary to keep both patients and staff safe.