VISITING HOSPITAL

All hospital visitors are encouraged to wear a medical face mask. Expand this message for information about visiting hospital. 

Last updated:
31 October 2024

Some visitor restrictions for all Health New Zealand | Te Whatu Ora Waitaha Canterbury hospitals and health facilities remain in place, but we have relaxed others.

There is still a heightened risk to vulnerable people in hospital and we encourage all people wear a mask when visiting any of our facilities and follow other advice designed to keep patients, staff and visitors safe.

To keep everybody safe:

  • Visitors or support people are advised to not visit our facilities if they are unwell. We advise that you do not visit if you have recently tested positive for COVID-19 and haven’t completed your isolation period.
  • Patients may have more than one visitor, except in some situations such as multi-bed rooms where it can cause overcrowding.
  • Surgical/medical masks are encouraged to be worn at all sites. Masks will be provided if you don’t have one.
  • Please practice hand hygiene with provided alcohol-based hand rub/gel

Thank you in advance for your patience and understanding as our staff work hard to protect and care for some of the most vulnerable in our community.

Visiting patients with COVID-19

  • People can visit patients who have COVID-19 but they must wear a surgical mask as a minimum – please use surgical masks provided.

All of our Hospitals

Visiting hours for our hospitals have returned to pre COVID-19 hours.

All visitors are encouraged to wear a medical face mask.

Parents/caregivers can be with their child in hospital and visitors are now allowed, except for the Children’s Haematology and Oncology Day stay where visitor restrictions might apply.

Patients and visitors can also read the additional COVID-19 related visiting guidelines .

Canterbury DHB hits hand hygiene milestone

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Thursday 4 May 2017Media release2 minutes to read

Canterbury District Health Board is improving its hand hygiene performance, recording its highest score yet in the latest Hand Hygiene New Zealand report.

Canterbury DHB scored a total of 83.3 percent adherence to hand hygiene opportunities, above the national standard of 80 percent.

Canterbury DHB Executive Director of Nursing Mary Gordon says hand hygiene represents one of the most important measures in the fight against healthcare associated infections, making it a key patient safety issue. Public hospitals have been audited quarterly for their hand hygiene performance since June 2012.

“It's such an important issue the World Health Organisation (WHO) set a World Hand Hygiene Day for 5 May to encourage a continuing focus on the topic with health care workers, something Canterbury DHB uses as a focal point to get staff talking about hand hygiene at work,” Mary says.

“Hand Hygiene is a vital part of our patient care and we have made a concerted effort to improve our performance in this area. We run educational campaigns for staff each year over the month of May and are eager to build on our recent audit results.”

Canterbury has lifted its audited results significantly from 61.8 percent compliance in October 2014.

“The audits are not a measure of hand cleanliness but of compliance with the ‘5 moments of hand hygiene' recommended by WHO. The moments are: before patient contact, before a procedure, after a procedure or body fluid exposure risk, after patient contact and after contact with patient surroundings.”

It's this last point that Canterbury DHB is raising particular awareness of this May.

Director of Quality and Patient Safety Susan Wood says it's important we remain vigilant to all the possible sites of contamination in our working environment, from keyboards in the clinical areas to patients' bedrails.

“Our staff are focussed on having clean hands and we also strongly encourage patients to ask staff to clean their hands if they notice a lapse – infection prevention is in everybody's interest,” Susan says.

ENDS

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Page last updated: 3 October 2018

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