Compassionate visitors, and essential care for children only now allowed at central Adelaide Hospitals due to Covid

Public hospital staff are pleading with people not to take out their frustration on frontline workers, as visitors are now banned unless the circumstances are exceptional.

Visitors are no longer allowed to enter central Adelaide hospitals unless their family members are dying, or the visitor is critical to a patient’s care due to rising Covid-19 concerns.

SA Health’s Central Adelaide Local Health Network announced on social media that from Tuesday, December 28, visitors at the Royal Adelaide Hospital and Queen Elizabeth Hospital are only allowed on site for compassionate reasons and for when they are critical to care.

“This includes end-of life visits, where we are providing young people with treatment and they require their parent, or in an emergency,” the statement said.

Visitors would need to discuss with nursing staff prior to arriving at the sites to see if they meet the criteria.

“We’ve made the difficult but necessary decision to restrict visitors coming to our health facilities due to increasing Covid transmission rates,” the statement said.

“While difficult, it is absolutely essential that we keep Covid out of our facilities for the safety of our staff and vulnerable patients.”

It is not known how long the visitor restrictions will remain in place.

At the Women’s and Children’s Hospital, one visitor a day is permitted to visit children or accompany them to outpatient or emergency visits. Women in labour and after birth are allowed one person to visit. Visitors over the age of one and under 18 are not allowed.

Ambulances at the Royal Adelaide Hospital RAH. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Brenton Edwards

The Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation SA’s Rob Bonner said while they were pleased with the infection control measure, the direction would add more pressure to nurses.

“I think it’s exceptionally difficult; nurses are already under pressure, we are facing a situation where rosters are not filled within a number of areas at our hospitals at the moment,” Mr Bonner said.

“We will talk to CALHN about how they manage that (the logistics of the direction) in the coming days, but typically, nurses, because they are the ones that are there 24 hours a day seven days a week, end up managing that visitor traffic, so this is going to add further to the pressures and that’s regrettable.”

He urged people to be understanding to frontline workers about the rule.

“I think we need to remember that the nurses are not the decision makers here, and they don’t control things other than making sure that the right number of visitors who have been cleared are able to visit their loved ones in hospital,” he said.

“If people are upset or angry, we would urge them not to take that out on the frontline staff in the wards who have to in effect police this decision but are not decision makers themselves.”

South Australia recorded 842 new Covid cases on Monday, and 23 people are now in hospital with the virus.

SA Health was contacted for further comment about how the rules would be managed logistically.