New guides help patients with accessibility needs
This week, we launched our new AccessAble guides, which help patients, carers, relatives and staff access our hospital and community sites with confidence.
The project, generously funded by St George’s Hospital Charity, is the end result of six months work, and involved a team from AccessAble accessing our various sites, and producing detailed guides for different areas of the Trust, with information about everything from parking and hearing loops, to walking distances and accessible toilets.
The guides were officially launched yesterday (24 July) at a special event here at St George’s, attended by Jacqueline Totterdell, our Chief Executive, plus staff from our estates team who helped make the project possible.
Accessibility guides for St George’s, Queen Mary’s and our other community sites are now available to view on the AccessAble website – and, in time, we will integrate these into our own website, and other information given to patients.
People can also download an AccessAble app for free, giving people easy to access information about accessibility across our different sites, so they can plan their visits with greater confidence. This is particularly helpful for people with disabilities, for whom accessing some areas of the hospital can be very challenging.
Jacqueline Totterdell, Chief Executive, said: “This is really positive news for the Trust, and – thanks to the hospital charity and the team at AccessAble – anyone accessing our hospital or community sites can now do so with more and better information.
“We know there is more to do to make our services more accessible, and this will be one of the considerations in our new estates strategy. However, the new guides will prove really helpful to the people who use our services currently, and will be updated as and when changes are made. This is a really positive step forward, and I’m also grateful to Jenni Doman and her estates team for helping make this possible.”
As well as producing guides for our hospital and community sites, AccessAble also mapped St George’s, University of London. This is also available for members of the public, and Jenny Higham, university Principal, also attended the launch event.
To access the guides for St George’s, visit the AccessAble website here.
