Visitor restrictions at Naas Hospital 

Visitor restrictions have been imposed in Naas Hospital is order to curb the spread of respiratory viral illnesses.

There is an excess of 45 patients being managed with a respiratory illness requiring isolation at Naas General Hospital which impacts on available bed capacity.

In the past two weeks, Naas General Hospital (NGH) and it’s Local Injury Unit have seen some 1,589 attendances with over 355 admissions in that period. All additional capacity on site has been activated, as well as the use of off-site capacity in private hospitals, nursing homes and other care facilities.

In order to reduce the spread of these illnesses in the healthcare setting Naas has implemented visiting restrictions. These measures will be lifted as soon as possible when clinical circumstances allow. Certain exceptions will be made by contacting ward staff in advance. For up-to-date guidelines on visiting patients, please visit: https://www2.hse.ie/services/disruptions/ The HSE Lead for the Kildare and West Wicklow Integrated Health Area, Mary O’Kelly commented: “Hospitals are implementing visiting restrictions. With respect to Naas General Hospital specifically, we are permitting only one visitor at a time per patient during normal visiting times, with some exceptions made on compassionate grounds.

“We are asking people to only visit patients at the hospital or other health care residential setting if you are symptom free from flu or other respiratory illness, and would ask all visitors to wear masks and to use the hand sanitisation facilities on entry to the hospital/care setting.

“As the weather conditions are expected to get colder we know that this can contribute to activity across our services where we see more trips, slips and falls and while injury units are very much the appropriate setting for these types of injury we would ask people to be cautious and not to take unnecessary risks that can led to injury.

“Check in on neighbours and make sure they are supported in the cold spell.

While hospitals are busy, staff are caring for many seriously ill patients all over the Christmas and New Year holiday. We would ask patients with non-emergency conditions to seek assistance from other parts of the health service”.

There are a range of care pathways available to patients who do not need emergency care including visiting your pharmacy for advice on common minor illnesses. Find out more at www.hse.ie/eng/services/list/2/pharmacy/ It also advises that if you urgently need to see a GP outside of normal hours, contact the local GP Out of Hours service – https://www2.hse.ie/services/find-urgent-emergency-care/.