Chesterfield Royal Hospital reveals when you can visit loved ones again

The hospital’s incident management team has opted to re-introduce limited visiting from Wednesday, August 12 – four months after suspending visiting because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

A series of measures have been put in place to keep patients, staff and relatives protected and safe from the risk of infection.

MORE: This is what people in Staveley think the town needs - as a multi-million pound homes investment for the area is announced

Chief operating officer Tony Campbell said: “We appreciate that it’s been really hard for people not to see loved-ones who have been in hospital throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, although rightly we have always offered ‘compassionate visiting’ for patients who are extremely vulnerable or at the end of their life.

“Now that we’ve risk assessed the whole site – and we’re working through a service restoration plan, we’ve decided to re-introduce limited visiting on our general wards as well as our maternity ward.

"It’s a cautious approach designed to try and strike a delicate balance between keeping loved ones connected at an anxious time, whilst keeping them protected from possible infection.

MORE: Derbyshire firefighters slam teens who try to get into baby swings for latest TikTok craze

"We will be running a DESIGNATED visitor system - and whilst it won’t necessarily be the best solution for everyone, we feel it’s a fair compromise.

"To keep people safe, maintain social distancing - and reduce footfall on site we can’t just go back to what we had before.

"For the situation ‘right now’ this allows us to give every patient the opportunity to have a visitor during their hospital stay.”

Compassionate visiting – to be with babies, children, women in labour, other vulnerable patients and those critically ill or at the end of life will remain the same.

General visiting will operate through a ‘designated’ visitor system – where patients allocate a specific person as their ‘designated visitor’ for up to one week at a time.

At the Royal, each bed in a bay and each bed in a side-room will be given a set one-hour visiting slot and designated visitors will be asked to visit during that time.

Some areas will continue to remain exempt from visiting to protect patients.

A message from the Editor:

Thank you for reading this story on our website. While I have your attention, I also have an important request to make of you.

In order for us to continue to provide high quality and trusted local news on this free-to-read site, I am asking you to also please purchase a copy of our newspaper.

Our journalists are highly trained and our content is independently regulated by IPSO to some of the most rigorous standards in the world. But being your eyes and ears comes at a price. So we need your support more than ever to buy our newspapers during this crisis.

With the coronavirus lockdown having a major impact on many of our local valued advertisers - and consequently the advertising that we receive - we are more reliant than ever on you helping us to provide you with news and information by buying a copy of our newspaper.

Thank you

Nancy Fielder, editor