Emergencies and urgent care
Why is it important?
- To take your mind off your health problems and concerns
- To enable you do something useful at times when nothing else is happening
- To relieve boredom
- To keep in contact with friends and family or you may choose to have a conversation with a hospital volunteer or someone from our pastoral and support service
- To help you to stay positive as this is likely to speed up recovery
- To enable you to interact with visitors by doing a joint activity
- To enable you to retain contact with the outside world and your community, for example by watching or listening to news
- To enable you to keep an eye on work or home so you don’t feel out of control or left out
- To enable you to do the same things as you do at home. This could include listening to or watching a favourite soap opera, responding to work emails, online banking, or remotely checking up on your pet
- To distract you during an unpleasant or worrying procedure, such as having blood taken.
Internet access via NHS Wi-Fi
All patients and visitors can access hospital Wi-Fi free of charge. Please select NHS Wi-Fi from your Wi-Fi settings menu then follow the instructions provided on screen.
Please note some functions are not accessible for bandwidth reasons including downloading large content (such as films) and accessing personal streaming services such as Amazon Prime, Disney Plus or Netflix.
NHS Wi-Fi should allow you to access many sites and apps. If you wish to watch content such as music videos or feature films, we recommend that you download content to your device before coming to hospital to avoid any access issues.
If you experience problems with our NHS Wi Fi service, please contact Wi Fi Spark directly on 0344 848 9555 or email support
Personal devices and security
You are welcome to bring your own device such as a radio, phone, or tablet for your personal use whilst at the hospital, but please note that this is at your own risk.
Staff can securely lock your valuables away for the whole period you are on a ward or whilst you are undergoing a procedure, but we do not provide a lockable cabinet at each bedside to enable you to securely store items when you are not using them.
If you choose not to bring in your own digital device, but you expect to be in the hospital overnight or a long period of time in a waiting area, why not bring along alternative forms of entertainment, such as books, magazines or puzzles.
Charging phones and electronic devices
At Kingston Hospital, Portable Joos battery chargers are available from vending machines in the main Emergency Department waiting room, Level 4 Main Outpatients or Ground Floor, Maternity Unit. For a small fee, you can borrow a charger to take with you around the hospital. These can be returned to any Joos machine or they can be purchased to take home and re-use.
If you bring your own charger with you, please ask staff where the most convenient place is to plug it in. We do not currently provide a plug point at every bedside.
Other forms of distraction and entertainment
At Kingston Hospital, specialist staff are available at certain times to entertain and distract children, and our activities coordinators will support elderly patients in our dementia wards. Some of our day rooms (inpatient areas) have a shared TV and/or radio.
Volunteers are available at certain times of day to support inpatients and people waiting in the Emergency Department. Volunteers are happy to have a friendly conversation to make your stay here as pleasant as possible.
We understand that having a means of distraction and entertainment whilst in hospital is important for patients. The Patient Experience team are leading the work to develop more entertainment and distraction facilities. If you have ideas about this, please contact us by emailing khft.