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

Work heats up for Can Do Catering employees

Monday 3 December 2018Media release3 minutes to read

THIS IS AN ARCHIVED PAGE. The advice and information contained in this page may not be current and it should only be used for historical reference purposes.
Tommy preparing mince pies for a customer order.

Tommy preparing mince pies for a customer order.

With the run-up to Christmas, this is the busiest week of the year for a unique catering enterprise in Christchurch.

Can Do Catering is a social enterprise business, employing people with disabilities.

Ron and Tommy have been working at Can Do since it launched in early 2015.

“I actually came up with the name,” Ron says. “We can do! We can do anything.”

He says it was scary going into the unknown at the beginning, but business came in “leaps and bounds”.

“Now we’ve got 250 clients.”

He is saving money for a trip to Australia next year.

“This job’s good, we get the same pay as other people.”

Tommy is Can Do’s all-round helper. He can work alongside most of the other employees doing cold food preparation, and does dishes when they come back from events.

But his main gig is going out on delivery runs with the driver in Can Do’s van, where he gets to meet the clients.

“It’s a really good job. We enjoy it.”

Manager Vicky Harris says she has been amazed by the stories Can Do employees have shared about their work.

“The stories had me in tears, I didn’t realise the impact that we had made.”

She says work gives people a sense of purpose, and the employees have gained skills as well.

“When we first started, buttering a piece of bread was quite difficult for some employees,” Vicky says. “There’s quite a few people who can now work independently.”

Ron’s goal is to cook banoffee pie from start to finish using his own recipe.

Each of the employees has different strengths, Vicky says.

“Mike, who has just started with us, he’s an absolute whiz. In actual fact he’s sort of put us on the back foot because we’ve got to have a lot more food prepared for him.

“Wendy, she’s our blissball queen. She can go into the kitchen now and make blissballs from whoa to go, so that’s a real achievement.”

Helen Lapin, a seating and wheelchair therapist at Canterbury DHB’s Adult Community Therapy Service, is one of Can Do’s clients.

“We recently had the pleasure of using Can Do Catering to provide morning teas for a week-long wheelchair and seating course held at Burwood Hospital,” she says.

“What a surprise we had each day as Can Do Catering delivered the morning teas!

“We had scones, savouries, homemade biscuits, hot food, meat platter, and never two days the same.

“As a DHB service working daily with people with disabilities, it was a pleasure to be able to support Can Do Catering and to be working with such a professional team.

ENDS

For more information, contact:
Canterbury DHB Media Advisor
027 567 5343

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Page last updated: 19 October 2022

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