BO­BIE-LEE DIXON

bo­bie-lee.dixon@guardian.co.tt

A ru­mour that hos­pi­talised COVID-19 pa­tients were pro­hib­it­ed from us­ing their cell­phones has been rub­bished by four of the coun­try’s Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ties (RHAs).

The con­cern was brought to the at­ten­tion of the Guardian Me­dia news­room by cit­i­zens in­quir­ing if there was any truth, but the ru­mour was shut down by all RHA heads who de­scribed the ru­mour as pure mis­chief.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view with Davlin Thomas, Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer (CEO) of the North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NCRHA), he was the first to dis­miss the hearsay say­ing, “That’s not the pol­i­cy of the NCRHA COVID-19 fa­cil­i­ties; in fact, we’ve al­so made avail­able ‘pa­tient li­aisons’ who com­mu­ni­cate with fam­i­lies about their pa­tients.”

He said in the in­stances where a pa­tient was very ill, these “pa­tient li­aisons” were es­pe­cial­ly used to in­ter­act with fam­i­lies on the pa­tient’s be­half.

When con­tact­ed, act­ing Med­ical Chief of Staff at the Scar­bor­ough Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, Dr Vic­tor Wheel­er, said via a What­sApp re­sponse, “That in­for­ma­tion is in­cor­rect! In fact, that is how the doc­tors and nurs­es com­mu­ni­cate with them (pa­tients) be­fore go­ing in­side to treat them.”

His col­league, Ronald Tsoi-a-Fatt, CEO of the East­ern Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty, said al­so via What­sApp that he was not aware of any such re­stric­tion.

At the South-West RHA, cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ag­er Kevon Ger­vais told Guardian Me­dia via a What­sApp re­sponse, “At C-19 fa­cil­i­ties, SWRHA does not pro­hib­it pa­tient’s use of mo­bile de­vices to com­mu­ni­cate with loved ones. In fact, we gen­er­al­ly en­cour­age and fa­cil­i­tate our val­ued pa­tients in adopt­ing mean­ing­ful ways to be in reg­u­lar up­dates with fam­i­ly and friends.”

Ger­vais said, how­ev­er, the use of video con­fer­enc­ing or chat­ting was not ac­cept­able as per­son­al use was bal­anced against oth­er pa­tients’ pri­va­cy and con­fi­den­tial­i­ty.

While the ru­mour may have turned out not to be true, Guardian Me­dia spoke with the sec­re­tary of the As­so­ci­a­tion of Psy­chi­a­trists of Trinidad and To­ba­go Dr Var­ma Deyals­ingh about the im­por­tance of com­mu­ni­ca­tion re­gard­ing a COVID pa­tient’s men­tal health.

Deyals­ingh said iso­la­tion could have neg­a­tive ef­fects on the health of pa­tients cre­at­ing ad­di­tion­al prob­lems. He said sup­port and en­cour­age­ment by fam­i­ly mem­bers were im­per­a­tive and con­tact with rel­a­tives who could pray, speak and com­fort their loved ones should be al­lowed.

“Hav­ing phones could al­low per­sons to keep them­selves oc­cu­pied in re­li­gious chan­nels, mu­sic, med­i­ta­tion apps, or even re­search on the ill­ness,” said Deyals­ingh.