Your weekly newsletter that focuses on staff and events within the Trust
20 March 2020
Disappointment at London Marathon announcement— but fundraising continues A colleague at SaTH has expressed her disappointment that she will not be able to take part in the London Marathon next month, after organisers took the decision to postpone the event until October following expert advice to reduce the spread of coronavirus.
www.sath.nhs.uk/news/coronavirusrestrictions Dr Arne Rose, Medical Director at SaTH, said: “Friends and relatives are encouraged to stay in touch with patients via other means, such as video messaging, text messaging and social media. Mobile phones can be used in almost all areas of the hospital.
But Amanda Cheeseman (pictured), who is raising money for SaTH Charity, said she understood and supported the decision and would be using the time to continue her training and fundraising. Amanda gained her Marathon place through a ballot for staff. Amanda has been at SaTH for a year, having landed a new role of Clinical Support Worker with the Bariatric Team. She has pledged to raise at least £2,000 for SaTH Charity from her Marathon place. Amanda said: “I’m of course very disappointed not to be running in April for SaTH as planned, but understand the reasons why this decision was made and fully support it. “I will, in the meantime, be keeping up with my training ready to take on the challenge in October. Please keep supporting my fundraising page for SaTH Charity through my Just Giving page.” Anyone who wants to support Amanda’s fundraising can visit www.justgiving.com/camapign/2020 Coronavirus continues to have a major
impact on SaTH and the wider health economy. Regular updates and useful information is available on our dedicated intranet page—intranet/coronavirus and via the My SaTH app. There is also information on our website at www.sath.nhs.uk/patients-visitors/ coronavirus Visiting restrictions have been put in place at RSH and PRH and will remain until further notice. Under the new visiting guidelines, certain groups are being asked not to visit our hospitals. In addition, wards and areas have restrictions on visiting times. People will be able to visit their loved ones between 10am and 8pm but will only be able to visit for two hours between those times. Further restrictions are also in place. For further information visit
“We are asking the public and friends and families of patients to please restrict the number of phone calls to our hospitals in what is a highly-pressured time for our teams.“We appreciate that these measures may cause some anxiety and inconvenience, and we are sorry for that, but this is a highly unusual situation and our priority needs to be in protecting our vulnerable patients. I want to thank the public for their understanding and our teams for their hard work at this time.
“In line with well-established plans for situations like this, every hospital in England has now been asked to suspend all non-urgent elective operations for at least three months, with some other procedures likely to be rescheduled before then so we can train our staff and adapt certain areas. Urgent and emergency cases and cancer treatments will be carrying on as normal, but we know many people waiting for treatment will be disappointed or worried, and we will be contacting everyone affected as soon as possible.”