VISITING HOSPITAL

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

Last updated:
13 March 2023

Some visitor restrictions for all 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 so we recommend 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 must not visit our facilities if they are unwell. 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 recommended to be worn at all sites. Masks will be provided if you don’t have one.
  • For Specialist Mental Health Services everyone is strongly encouraged to wear a face mask in all inpatient areas and areas where consumers are receiving care (i.e. community appointments, home-visits, transporting people). Discretion may be applied in cases where masks impair your ability to communicate effectively.
  • Visitors must not eat or drink in multibed rooms because of the increased risk when multiple people remove their face mask in the same space.
  • Hand sanitiser is available and must be used.

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 an N95 mask – this will be provided if you don’t have one.
  • Other methods of communication will be facilitated e.g. phone, Facetime, Zoom, WhatsApp etc where visits aren’t possible.

All of our Hospitals

Visiting hours for our hospitals have returned to pre COVID-19 hours with the exception of Christchurch Women’s Hospital.

All visitors are recommended to wear a medical face mask.

Parents/caregivers are able to be with their child in hospital and visitors are now allowed, except for the Children’s Haematology and Oncology Day stay where just one parent/caregiver is able to attend their appointment with their child. Exceptions by special arrangement only.

Patients and visitors should also read the additional more detailed visiting guidelines for each specific hospital.

More COVID-19 information

Cutting-edge breast cancer research among national grants awarded to Canterbury and West Coast DHBs

Monday 7 December 2020Media release4 minutes to read

Health News

Canterbury and West Coast DHBs have received research funding to benefit local and New Zealand health care

Canterbury and West Coast DHBs have attracted a broad array of research funding to benefit local and New Zealand health care in new research funding from the Health Research Council.

Five different grants received approval ranging from developing tools for better predicting Emergency Department bed need through to “What growing up well looks like for Coast kids”. Two more grants are under negotiation.

The largest grant for the DHBs went to Canterbury Health Laboratories Anatomical Pathologist Dr Gavin Harris for his work on developing computational pathology capability and expertise for breast cancer.

Gavin explains that his day job in anatomical pathology involves looking at cancerous tissue under microscopes and predicting how someone’s cancer is likely to behave or respond to different therapies. His specialty is breast cancer. Increasingly in pathology, glass slides are now being digitised so they can be viewed on a high definition monitor rather than using a microscope.

Gavin’s research is focused on developing the cutting-edge practice of computational pathology. This involves generating computer algorithms that can be used to analyse digitised glass slides for much quicker, accurate, objective analysis.

“At the moment it takes one to two hours to manually review a single breast tissue sample and produce a report for clinicians to view.

“With computational pathology we would expect that that would reduce the time significantly. This would have big implications for how we meet increasing cancer rates with scarce specialist resources,” says Gavin.

This latest grant is the third Gavin has received for this work since 2019 and will provide the funding to partly step back from his day job and devote more time to his research.

While the field is attracting big interest and funding overseas, it’s in its early stages in New Zealand. Gavin believes our local capability, including the Canterbury Health Laboratories, Te Papa Hauora/Health Precinct partners and Cancer Society Tissue Bank, puts us in a unique position to lead developing computational pathology technology in New Zealand.

“My goal is to attract funding to develop computational pathology expertise locally, which has maximum benefit for New Zealand cancer patients. The aim would be to use New Zealand data and expert analysis, so ultimately New Zealand cancer patients and their clinicians would have more information about their cancers and how they might respond to various treatments. This would support a more personalised approach to cancer management.”

Canterbury DHB Chief Medical Officer Sue Nightingale says, “We’re delighted to have attracted such a broad range of grants from across different specialties and determined to keep growing our research activities here to help improve the health and wellbeing of our communities.”

The full list of Health Research Council Health Sector Research Collaboration Grants for Canterbury and West Coast DHBs are: a Research Activation Grant for Dr Cameron Lacey, Canterbury DHB Clinical Director Research, for a “Review of Māori consultation processes for research” with a second research activation grant in negotiation. There are four Research Career Development Awards granted to: Jane George, West Coast DHB Director of Allied Health, Scientific and Technical, for “Rural early years ‘What growing up well looks like for Coast kids’”; Dr Laura Hamill, Canterbury DHB Emergency Department Fellow, for “Improving Care and Equity in acute medical decision making”; Dr Gavin Harris, Canterbury Health Laboratories Anatomical Pathologist, for “Developing computational pathology capability and expertise for breast cancer”; and Emily Timothy, Canterbury DHB Community Stroke Rehabilitation Service Physiotherapist, for “Conceptualising inpatient rehabilitation early intervention vocational services”. A further research career development award is in negotiation

ENDS

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Page last updated: 8 December 2020

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