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

Feedback helps mental health services plan

Friday 9 March 2018Media release2 minutes to read

Feedback from people with experience of mental health or addictions is helping redesign local mental health services.

The West Coast Mental Health Review (2014) identified a number of ways that services could be made more accessible to the community, including having more help and support for people in their local communities and better alignment with other health services.

Late last year West Coast DHB Director Mental Health and Addiction Services Dr Cameron Lacey said the DHB was looking at ways to improve services for people who are not in hospital or under specialist care.

He welcomed input from people who had experience of West Coast mental health or addiction services: “It is also the right time to focus on how the needs of people with mental health and addiction challenges can best be responded to in the future. We have worked on what we want in terms of future direction and we now need to develop the detail of what this looks like in reality,” he said at the time.

The project team looking at future services said recent feedback from consumers had crystallised information received last year from consumer forums, other mental health providers and staff of the DHB services.

“We're hearing that we need more clarity about how people get access to mental health support or services; and an increasing range of ways of supporting people in the community while they are recovering. We have already been looking at how we might incorporate this feedback into our service design,” Dr Lacey says.

There would be another opportunity for consumer input at future forums, to be held when the project team were ready to present more ideas about improvements to services.

“We want to thank those who took the time to let us know their ideas. It is vitally important to hear from those who receive care – they can tell us what their experiences were like and what we might want to improve. It's been very helpful,” Dr Lacey says.

ends

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Page last updated: 17 April 2019

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