Anyone who recently had a scheduled operation/ appointment at St Mary’s which had to be postponed due to the extreme pressure on health care services throughout December and January will be pleased to hear that things are starting to resume to normal.
We understand that non urgent, routine surgery is due to re-commence this week and those who had appointments cancelled will be contacted by the Appointments Centre to re-schedule their operation as soon as possible.
Sheila Paul, Chief Operating Officer at the Isle of Wight NHS Primary Care Trust said:
“I am pleased to say that pressure on hospital services has dropped to a level that we can now begin to re-schedule non urgent, routine surgery.
“In December and January we took the decision to postpone non urgent, planned inpatient admissions for surgery, such as hernia and hysterectomy, with immediate effect to enable us to respond to the very high levels of emergency medical admissions that we were receiving. Clinically urgent surgery e.g. cancer and emergencies continued as normal as did the majority of day case surgery.
“I would like to thank those people who have had their operation postponed for their patience and understanding and to reassure them that we will endeavour to re-schedule their appointment as soon as possible. And also to thank our staff, who have worked so hard over the past few weeks to ensure that patients continue to receive first class care in what has been very difficult circumstances.”
Carol Alstrom, Chief Nurse and Director of Infection Prevention and Control said:
“It has been necessary to ask the public to help us by reducing visiting to St. Mary’s whilst the hospital has been on red alert which has made a real difference to the ward environment and has eased the ‘traffic’ that we were experiencing throughout the hospital. It would be extremely helpful if family members continue to keep visiting to a minimum (i.e. two visitors per patient at any one time) whilst the hospital gets back to normal service.
“Of course, I cannot stress enough how vital it is for people to stay away from St. Mary’s Hospital or any health care facility, unless in the case of an emergency, if they have had diarrhoea or vomiting within the past 48 hours or have been in contact with anyone who has.”
Image: Auntie P
