Hospital sending out Healthy Vibes
Ealing Hospital is helping patients and loved ones keep in touch, despite on-going visitor restrictions imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Healthy Vibes allows loved ones to send messages, greeting cards, pictures and short video messages via lnwh-tr.healthyvibes@nhs.net
Staff then print them out or show to patients via an ipad.
Healthy Vibes is the idea of Dr Bhavya Tyagi and colleagues who recognize the healing power of communication, especially during the pandemic
Bhavya said: “We just want to help people make that connection. No-one wants to be in hospital and visiting hours are the highlight of the day for most people so having that taken away is tough."
“I work in the high dependency unit and have seen a number of elderly patients pass away without being able to see anyone except nursing staff. It’s terribly sad and I wanted to help bridge that gap
“It’s easy to forget that human contact - even if it is via an electronic device – is part of the healing process. It isn’t just about medicine.”
The trust’s IT department has provided several tablets and ipads for the Health vibes initiative and has already started receiving emails from families.
Families are reminded to include the patient’s full name and date of birth in the subject line of a request. Healthy Vibes is open from 9am to 4pm, Monday to Friday and can only accept emails that are less than 20mb in size.
The trust hopes to extend the service to its other sites soon.