Transcript of Can a family member visit me if I need to go to hospital?
A conversation between Ella Darling from the Council for Intellectual Disability and Dr Jan Fizzell who is Senior Medical Advisor at NSW Health.
Ella: What happens if I need to go to hospital and I want to see my family member?
Dr Jan: A lot of hospitals have got restrictions on visitors at the moment but they can put in special consideration for people who need their family with them to support them.
Ella: Yes, if they are high needs and they need their parents to take care of them or their support worker because their parents can't come in because they're worried about the risk of Coronavirus, which is absolutely true, but what can you do about that?
Dr Jan: What you can do is talk to your treating team at the hospital or your advocate for you can also talk to your treating team. Every hospital has a person who's either called a patient advocate or patient's friend and they're there to hear your side of things and to help you solve problems. So if you are worried that you are not getting the support that you need you ask for the patient advocate to come and talk to you and they can help try and work out what the problem is. Sometimes no one is going to actually try and stop somebody from having someone they really need on purpose but they may have an accident where they might try and treat everyone the same. But we know not everyone has the same needs so if you have additional needs to most people then you should be able to have your family or your worker help you when you need it.
Dr Jan: The key thing is making sure that your family or support worker are also safe particularly if you are sick with COVID-19.