HOSPITAL VISITING

All hospital visitors are recommended to wear a medical face mask. For more information about visiting: Visitors and family. See our COVID-19 page for general COVID-19 advice, detailed hospital visiting guidelines and COVID-19 tests.

See West Coast COVID-19 vaccination clinics for info on vaccinations link COVID-19 Vaccination • West Coast • Healthpoint

Last updated:
16 September 2022

Fewer visitor restrictions now apply

For visitors to all facilities (effective from and last updated on 16 September 2022)

Some visitor restrictions for all Te Whatu Ora Te Tai o Poutini West Coast health facilities remain in place, but we have relaxed others.

There is still a heightened risk to vulnerable people in hospital and so people must continue to wear a mask when visiting any of our facilities and follow other advice designed to keep patients, staff and other visitors safe.

Kia whakahaumaru te whānau, me ngā iwi katoa – this is to keep everybody safe:

  • Visitors or support people must not visit our facilities if they are unwell. Do not visit if you have recently tested positive for COVID-19 and haven’t completed your isolation period.
  • Patients in single rooms may have more than one visitor while patients in multi-bed rooms can have one visitor only per patient to ensure there is no overcrowding.
  • People can have one or two support people to accompany them to outpatients appointments.
  • Women in labour in a birthing suite, in Te Nīkau Hospital’s Maternity Ward and in Buller’s Kawatiri Maternity Unit can have the usual support people, subject to space, for the duration of their stay in our facilities.
  • Eating or drinking at the bedside is at the discretion of the Clinical Nurse Manager. Visitors must not eat or drink in multibed rooms because of the increased risk when multiple people remove their mask in the same space.
  • Hand sanitiser is available and must be used.

Thank you in advance for your patience and understanding as our staff work hard to protect and care for some of the most vulnerable in our community.

Mask wearing

  • Surgical/medical masks must be worn at all sites, except in counselling, mental health and addiction services where it’s on a case-by-case agreement with patients. Masks will be provided if you don’t have one. In higher-risk environments, people, including young children, may not be able to visit if they cannot wear a mask.
  • Any member of the public with a mask exemption is welcome in all our facilities when attending to receive health care and *treatment. Please show your mask exemption card and appointment letter to staff at the entrance. *Treatment includes coming into the Emergency Department, outpatient appointments, surgery or a procedure.

Visiting patients with COVID-19

  • People are able to visit patients who have COVID-19 but they must wear an N95 mask – this will be provided if you don’t have one.
  • Other methods of communication will be facilitated e.g. phone, Facetime, Zoom, WhatsApp etc where visits aren’t possible.

You must NOT visit our facilities if you

  • are COVID-19 positive
  • are unwell. Please stay home if you have a tummy bug or cold or flu/COVID-19-like symptoms (even if you’ve tested negative for COVID-19).

Te Whatu Ora West Coast Aged Residential Care facilities

Visitors are welcome at our Aged Care Residential facilities, subject to the space available. All visitors must wear a surgical mask.

More COVID-19 information

Contingency Planning at Canterbury and West Coast DHBs for the 9 June NZNO strike well underway

Friday 28 May 2021Health news3 minutes to read

Having received an official strike notice in mid-May confirming that New Zealand Nurses’ Organisation nurses, midwives and healthcare assistants are planning to strike, Canterbury and West Coast DHBs are implementing contingency plans for the eight-hour strike period, from 11am to 7pm on Wednesday 9 June.

Acting Chief Executive for Canterbury and West Coast DHBs, Becky Hickmott says our number one consideration, as always, is patient safety, and acknowledges that NZNO also supports patient safety by providing Life Preserving Services (LPS) during the strike.

LPS, simply put, are the staffing levels and agreed essential tasks that ensure people in our care will be safe. LPS is on a voluntary basis, but because the union is responsible for providing LPS, staff that agree to cover LPS duties are enabling their NZNO colleagues to strike.

“Urgent and emergency care will remain available throughout the period of the planned strike. This includes the Emergency Department, acute surgery, all intensive care units, cancer care and the Renal Dialysis unit.

“111 calls will be responded to as usual and people should access urgent and emergency care as they normally would, but expect things to be busy,” says Ms Hickmott.

“There are close to 5000 nurses, midwives and healthcare assistants at Canterbury and West Coast DHBs who may strike, so the strikes are expected to cause significant disruption to non-urgent services in both regions.

“We apologise in advance for the disruption this planned industrial action will cause but we respect NZNO members’ right to take industrial action and acknowledge that these key staff have a valued role as part of our health system,” Ms Hickmott says.

“We are putting a number of measures in place to ensure we can continue to provide urgent and emergency care during the strikes. Our contingency plans are about rescheduling what isn’t urgent and reducing the demand on the staff who will be working on this day.

“As we have had more notice than usual of this strike, we have made far fewer surgery and outpatient appointments, and so there is less to change. We are in the process of rescheduling any that had been made on an individual basis to ensure that there is sufficient capacity to continue to provide emergency care during the strike.

“Urgent procedures and surgery such as cancer surgery will be prioritised during the planned strike period on a case-by-case basis.

“Our aim is to ensure those working during that period are available to care for patients with high and complex needs, as well as those needing emergency care,” Ms Hickmott says.

Useful numbers for contacting the appropriate service on the West Coast can be found here:

https://www.wcdhb.health.nz/your-health/find-and-enrol-at-a-health-center/

Switchboard numbers for individual Canterbury Hospital sites can be found here:

http://www.cdhb.health.nz/Hospitals-Services/hospitals/Pages/default.aspx

ENDS

For further information, contact:
communications@cdhb.health.nz

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Page last updated: 28 May 2021

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