Staying safe at Sheffield Children’s

If you’re coming to Sheffield Children’s for an outpatient appointment at any of our sites, staying as an inpatient or visiting the Emergency Department or as a visitor to these areas, we are working hard to make sure everyone is safe and looked after.

Update on 4 November 2021

We are working hard to keep patients, families and colleagues safe.

To help Sheffield Children’s stay safe, please remember:

• Wear a face covering
• Inpatients (the Hospital and Becton Centre): two named parents or carers for the duration of the patients stay. 
• All other areas (Outpatients, Medical Daycare, Emergency Department etc) Only one parent or carer to accompany a patient *
• Wash your hands regularly
• Keep 2 metres apart
• Don’t come to the Trust if you have COVID symptoms unless it is for urgent care. Let us know and we can reschedule your appointment or surgery.
• We recommend families do a lateral flow test before coming to any of our sites as an additional precaution to help reduce any spread of COVID. Our staff do these regularly too.

* We understand there are times where a family really needs an additional person present, perhaps because the child has a lot of additional needs, and then our ward and department managers will work with families individually. Thank you for your cooperation and understanding.

If you have any questions about your appointment, please call the number on your appointment letter.

Please continue to come to booked appointments or scheduled surgery (unless you have symptoms or are isolating – see below) If anything changes, we will be in touch with you directly.

Our Emergency Department is also open if any child or young person aged 16 or under needs urgent medical care.

Coming to an appointment

• Please do attend your booked appointment if you are able to – we are working hard at Sheffield Children’s to make sure it is safe for everyone to attend.
• Sheffield Children’s staff will be wearing personal protective equipment (PPE) such as a face mask, gloves and apron which means they are able to work closely with you.
• Please wear a face covering, keep 2 metres apart from others and only bring one parent or carer with a patient.

COVID symptoms and self-isolation

We ask that patients don’t attend a face to face appointment at Sheffield Children’s if the patient, or a member of your household, has symptoms of COVID-19 or has tested positive for COVID-19 (whether this is a lateral flow or a PCR test). Please ring the appointment line and rearrange the appointment for another time.

If anyone in the household has been a contact of someone who has tested positive for COVID-19, we ask that they don’t attend Sheffield Children’s. Other people in the household may still come to the appointment (as long as they aren’t a contact).

For example, if the sibling of a patient at Sheffield Children’s needs to isolate after a school-class bubble has been told to stay at home, the patient and a parent can still attend the appointment as long as no one has symptoms or has been told to self-isolate.

If the patient or household is self-isolating, a non-face-to-face appointment may be arranged as an alternative to face-to-face if that is appropriate.

Here are some of the ways we are helping keep patients and parents or carers safe when coming to Sheffield Children’s:

• Restrictions: Only one parent or carer to accompany a patient during their time with us. We understand there are times where a family really needs an additional person present, perhaps because the child has a lot of additional needs, and then our ward and department managers will work with families individually. But in most cases, we can only allow one parent or carer to help keep our spaces safe for patients and colleagues.
• All staff are wearing surgical masks as a minimum. They will be wearing other personal protective equipment when treating a patient, the type of PPE depends on the type of care the patient is receiving. You can find out more about what PPE looks like by visiting the patient resources page here. You can also download a poster pack and make your own PPE people.
• All patients and accompanying parent or carers need to wear a face covering when coming onto a site. We ask that people bring their own but if they can’t, we can provide a mask. Everyone needs to wear a mask at all times on site. This includes at the bedside if Sheffield Children’s staff or other patients/their family are in the room.
• There are more opportunities to wash and sanitise hands on all sites – the play team have even made a song for you to sing whilst you wash
• There are lots of 2 metre social distancing reminders across the sites – from posters to floor stickers with Theo bear reminding everyone to keep your distance.
  
• There are screens around reception areas and hubs to help protect staff, patients and families.
• There are less patients coming into the Trust as lots of appointments are still happening through video call or phone call.
• Waiting area spaces have been moved around to help social distancing.
• There are extra cleaning teams throughout the Trust who are doing lots more cleaning than usual. We have also changed the type of cleaning solution used to something which is proven to be more effective against viruses.
• Patients coming for elective surgery will have a COVID-19 test three days before their surgery.
  If a patient is positive for COVID-19, surgery may be postponed until a later date. However, if the patient is positive for COVID and needs urgent surgery, there are plans in place to make patients receive the care they need.
• All Sheffield Children’s staff know that if they have any of the signs of COVID they need to self-isolate, get tested and stay at home if it is positive. The Trust also follows the relevant test and trace procedure.

Videos

Watch our videos about coming to Sheffield Children’s:

If you’re coming to the hospital, we’ve made these videos about outpatients and surgery:

If you’re going to the Ryegate Therapy Block:

The team at the Ryegate Therapy Block have explained their processes for coming to an appointment

Frequently asked questions

• Video appointments
• Coming for surgery
• Outpatients

Message from our Director of Nursing

Sally Shearer, Director of Nursing at Sheffield Children’s said: “We understand patients and families may be anxious about coming for an appointment or to the hospital during this time and we want to reassure them we are doing everything we can to make sure our spaces are clean, safe and socially distanced as well as providing our staff with necessary PPE and our patients with face coverings. Staff across the Trust are on hand to support any patient who needs our care, whether it’s an emergency, planned appointment or elective surgery, so please don’t hesitate to come to us and seek medical help when it is needed.”