"If I were a patient, and I didn't have any clean knickers, I wouldn't be feeling very good at all."
16th November 2020
Submitted by Katie Taylor-Rossall, East Lancashire Hospitals Trust
How do you help families and patients feel connected when they can't see each other?
How do you make patients as comfortable as possible? As the pandemic took hold of our local area, our Trust made the decision to "lockdown" the hospital and to not allow families and friends to visit their loved ones while patients. This immediately had an impact on both our patients and their families.
Our ward staff did everything they could to keep patients and their loved ones connected including telephone and video calling, but our patient experience team set to work to look at how we help patients be as comfortable as possible, and a lot of the time, this comes down to having your belongings with you.
As services were put on hold more of our patients were in the hospital, and few had a chance to pack a bag, or bring enough items with them for their stay. Our deputy director of nursing empathised continually stating "if I was a patient, and I didn't have any clean knickers, I wouldn't be feeling very good at all."
Our Patient Experience team set up a Patient Belonging Drop Off service. This would be a weekday service run entirely by volunteers who would take items from loved ones at the doors of our hospitals and deliver them to wards. It sounds simple, but this service did so much more. It soon became clear that loved ones felt they were doing something to help; many left letters in the bags and many wanted to talk and share their concerns with volunteers who were always willing to listen. It was clear that for some would-be-visitors, this interaction could be one of very few they would have that week.
It was initially thought this service would be needed for a few weeks, maybe a month. The service has run for 19 weeks so far, and at an average of around 150 bags delivered per week, volunteers have delivered approximately 2580 bags of personal belongings to patients.
One would-be-visitor was a young boy, whose mum had come in for emergency surgery, he was encouraged by a volunteer to blow a kiss into the bag. The volunteer was sure to let the patient know what precious item was put safely into her bag. This was one just one of the ways volunteers helped patients of all ages feel closer to their loved ones.
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