Getting you home as soon as you're well enough
Southport and Ormskirk Hospital NHS Trust has created a booklet, Information about your stay in hospital and what will happen when you leave, with useful information on how to make sure you’re not in hospital any longer than you need to be, as staying in hospital once you are well enough to leave has an impact on your health.
- Research has found that for every ten days of bed rest in hospital, patients aged over 80 suffer the equivalent of ten years of muscle ageing – this can make a big difference in how independent you are after leaving hospital
- Older people are more likely to become confused when in hospital. This confusion can have a lot of side effects, including making dementia worse. It can mean the difference between going home or going into a nursing home. It is not clear why being in hospital has this impact, but it’s probably due to being in an unfamiliar and stressful place, away from a normal routine
- These unfamiliar surroundings and confusion make it more likely that patients will fall whilst they are in hospital. Hospital staff do everything they can to prevent this from happening but there are around 250,000 inpatient falls every year in the UK. Falling can cause injures and means that patients will spend even longer in hospital. Many of these patients wouldn’t have fallen if they had been at home
That’s why is important that hospital staff are able to discharge you from hospital as soon as possible, so you can recover at home or in another place more suitable for your needs and get back to your normal routine as soon as possible.
Did you know?
- Getting out of your nightclothes and into normal clothes can help you to start feeling better
- Try to stay mobile if you can – it can help your recovery – make sure you ask if you can get up and out of bed
- Not smoking whilst in hospital can help you recover faster – nicotine replacement therapy can help and is available free of charge
Local support to help you settle back in at home
Find a list of your local health services in Sefton here. You can also find some key contacts below.
Sefton Council
0808 196 3646 - open every day 8:00am- 8:00pm
www.sefton.gov.uk
contact@sefton.gov.uk
NHS volunteer responders
0808 196 3646
You can register for help and support if you are shielding at: www.gov.uk/coronavirusshielding-support
Sefton CVS
0151 920 0726
www.seftoncvs.org.uk
Adult mental health community teams
01704 383110
Adult safeguarding team
0345 1400 845
Children's social care team
0151 934 3737
