- Date: 22/04/2020
We've been working hard to get patients home from hospital during the global pandemic.
Our hospital discharge team already works in hospitals to make sure it is safe for patients to return to their home. This may include making sure the patient’s home is suitable for them and they have food, heating and hot water.
Since the outbreak the team have been working hard to free up bed spaces. Mark Cliffe, Home Support Officer at Revival, said: “We’re supporting people to return home, sometimes within 2 hours of them been told they can. This is to help the NHS free up capacity to cope."
We are under lots of pressure at the moment doing our bit to protect the NHS.
The team are doing this in a variety of ways, from arranging taxis (funded by Stoke-on-Trent City Council) to meeting and greeting people at the other end and making sure that they are settled in.
“One of our staff even donated a mattress so a patient could go home. All the bed stores were shut.” says Mark.
"There is of course risk attached to going into homes and we are seeing more people who have had the virus."
We are all anxious at times, but we are very much all in this together.
“This is not just about COVID-19, there are people still going into hospital with strokes, heart attacks, addictions and so we mustn’t lose sight of the fact that this work we do is for them too.”
It’s not just patients from the hospital Revival are helping. They are also doing welfare checks with vulnerable people in the community and checking that those who are self-isolating can get shopping delivered and referring them to other agencies for support.
Julie Russell is Revival’s Support & Wellbeing Manager: “I am pleased and proud that the team has pulled out all the stops to provide a flexible responsive service to vulnerable people locally.”