Covid-19 in critical care

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust has restrictions to visiting. This is to keep our vulnerable patients safe and also protect our staff who are essential to providing our services. ​

There are two instances in which the visiting restrictions are lifted. These are:

If a patient is at the end of their life

• If a patient has a registered carer
• If you are the registered carer of your loved one, please let the nurse in charge of the unit know. 

We understand that not having visiting access to your loved one is very difficult, and even more so when they may be critically unwell. 

We have a number of ways in which we would like to communicate with our patients’ families:

• Our medical team will try to call each family between the time of 14:00 and 18:00 daily, for a brief medical update
• Our shielded nursing team who are working from home will provide a welfare call service, where they will call you where appropriate to check you are OK, and that your questions are being answered. They will also ask to complete with you an ‘all about me’ questionnaire about your loved one so we can get to know their likes and dislikes. 
• Each area of the unit has a designated tablet on which we can provide video calls with your loved one. If you would like a video call this will be set up by the shielded nursing team.
• You can also contact the units on the numbers detailed in the site specific sections. We politely ask that only one member of each family makes calls to the unit, as multiple calls take nursing time away from the patient.