A hospital passport helps you to tell doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals your needs, communication preferences and likes and dislikes.
It includes important information about you like
- your personal details
- your medication
- any health conditions you have
- communication aids
- how you express yourself
It means that those staff members can understand your needs and make reasonable adjustments to the care and treatment they give you.
Faye talks about how the hospital passport has made a difference in her life.
“It helps me to tell the doctor what I do and do not like including my sensory preferences. I have used the hospital passport many times. It means that instead of explaining things over and again to doctors they can look at the hospital passport. This means it is easier and less stressful for me. They make reasonable adjustments for me, like I book appointments that suit me and the doctors and nurses understand me more. When I have some of my treatments I get the same doctors and nurses so this makes me less stressed.”
Faye talks about what she would like to see more of in hospital care.
“I think their needs to be more awareness of hospital passports for patients, its not very accessible for everyone. Also there are Learning Disability Liaison Nurses in hospitals and not everyone of them, or that they can have a flag on their system so when they go into hospital the Learning Disability Liaison Nurse knows they are in hospital and come and help them.”
You can create your own hospital passports.
Mencap have a hospital passport. It is a word document and you can print it off and fill it in if you would like. Click here for Mencap Hospital Passport.
The National Autistic Society have a hospital passport for Autistic people. This is a pdf document so you can print it off and then fill it in. Click here for the Autism Health passport. There is also a document which helps you fill it out, which you can find if you click here.
