Preparing for hospital 

Transcript of Preparing for hospital

My name's Catherine Andrews, I'm a registered general nurse

and I work as the lead nurse in preoperative assessment

at Chelsea and Westminster Foundation Trust.

During your stay as an inpatient,

we may well ask you to not eat and drink before you come to the hospital

and instructions will be given to you.

It is useful also to bring some things with you that you might need to use,

therefore we ask you to bring your medications with you,

we ask you to bring such things as books to read, money for telephones.

You may bring a mobile but you should not use it on the ward.

We would ask you to go outside and use it there.

There are usually telephone facilities available on the wards.

As far as food is concerned,

we can provide a range of different diets according to your requirements,

whether that be special diets or religious restrictions.

There is a choice of menu that's given to you by the housekeeping staff

and there are also on several wards protected mealtimes,

which means nothing much will happen to you while you're meant to be eating.

That's to make sure you get fed properly while you're here.

As far as visitors are concerned,

we encourage you to have visitors, we feel that helps you recover faster.

However, we do need to keep the numbers down as much as possible,

so we would recommend that you have two or three visitors at a time,

no more than that, and spread them out through the visiting hours.

During your stay as an inpatient,

the doctors and nurses will work together

to make sure that we reassure you when necessary,

give you any extra information you need, or support,

and that we make your stay with us as pleasant as it can be.