Distressed, withdrawn and dying Covid patients often didn't want to talk to their loved ones on iPad video calls'
| Published date | 01 April 2021 |
| Date | 01 April 2021 |
At the very time patients needed hugs from relatives, they were denied them.
In an attempt to bring them some comfort, hospitals embraced digital technology to keep people in touch -including for emotional calls to dying relatives.
But -unsurprisingly -iPads have proved no substitute for face-to-face contact.
For a start, whilst most people using video calls welcomed them as it meant they could keep in touch, it left some patients and nurses feeling guilty, according to a senior nurse at a leading London hospital.
Claire Gorham, the nurse matron at adult intensive care at St Mary’s Hospital in Paddington explained that patients were "feeling guilty that they were keeping nurses from doing work while they were having to hold the iPads".
'Patients felt guilty'
She said patients were also concerned that they were having conversations with loved ones that they felt were quite private and had to be mindful that there was a nurse or a healthcare assistant standing behind the iPad.
"Overwhelmingly during the pandemic they felt bad that they were keeping the nursing staff away from delivering other patient care," said Ms Gorham.
She shared the challenges of using digital technology during a moving patient experience session at Imperial NHS Trust's digital board meeting.
Over the last year 5,000 patients with coronavirus were treated at St Mary's, Charing Cross and Hammersmith hospitals and 4,500 have recovered.
Numbers of family visits to dying relatives had to be kept limited to prevent the spread of coronavirus.
“How awful not to have spent that time with your loved one at the end of life it’s just so sad,” said Ms Gorham.
What's been your experience of trying to communicate with your relatives in hospital during the pandemic Email julia.gregory@reachplc.com
'Patients didn't want iPad calls'
“Sometimes patients didn’t want to have the video calls and they didn’t want to be seen by their loved ones so unwell in critical care, or if they were going through a long-term illness often our patients do become distressed understandably or withdrawn.”
She added that some patients who later died did not want to have video calls.
“That was really distressing for our family members,” she said.
Calls made about dying patients were particularly difficult.
Pre-pandemic medical staff could talk to relatives face-to-face about the end of life decisions around their loved ones.
But Ms Gorham...
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