Family visiting and communication
Face to face visiting:
The hospital and ICUs are open for face-to-face visiting and information on visting and calling patients is available on the following weblink: https://www.guysandstthomas.nhs.uk/visiting-us
We will provide you links to healthtalk.org where you can read about the experiences of family and friends when visiting ICU for the first time and also every day.
Virtual Visiting
During the COVID-19 pandemic visiting across the Trust was significantly reduced, due to measures put in place to keep patients, staff and public safe. This meant many patients had reduced access to family and friends throughout their stay in hospital and may also have had no access to mobile phones or other devices to enable them to stay in touch with their families and friends virtually.
Virtual Visiting was introduced to give staff the ability to connect patients with their loved ones using tablets using a safe platform called aTouchAway™. Importantly, it supports person-centred care and will complement person-centred visiting, and it can also support mental health and wellbeing. It can reduce social isolation, stress and anxiety for the patient or service user and their loved ones, especially if a patient or service user has been admitted in an emergency.
This is still available and we can organise a video call for a friend or relative.
If you have a smart phone or tablet, please download the free aTouchAway app and register your account:
- Download aTouchAway on Android (see link below)
- Download aTouchAway on iOS (see link below)
Once you have a registered account you will need to:
- contact the ward and provide them the email address used to set up the account
- ask the ward to arrange a time for your virtual visit
Virtual visiting is possible thanks to our family communications team, who are supported by Life Lines.
For any support or further advice or feedback, please contact familycomms@gstt.nhs.uk.