Learning disabilities

Here you will find the most important information you need when you come to one of our hospitals.

There are videos for you to watch, which give you more information about your hospital visit as well as other information that you can download and print off.

To help us to help you, please download and fill in these forms:

• Learning disability hospital passport [docx]
• Health action plan [pdf]

Please bring these with you when you visit us.

We are looking for people with learning disabilities and/or autism to help us test a new virtual reality (VR) technology being used at our hospitals. 

The project uses a VR headset and smartphone to show you videos from inside our hospitals so you will know what to expect when you visit. To see if it is helpful, we need people to try the headset and let us know what they think of the videos.

Join us for an informational session Thursday 16 February to find out more. 

If you are interested please send us an email at mse.learningdisabilities@nhs.net.

We treat lots of patients every year as inpatients and outpatients.

Inpatients stay in our wards and we have over 1500 beds for them.

Outpatients come and see our doctors or nurses for short appointments in clinics, then they go home. If you are coming to our hospital as an outpatient, you will have a letter from us.

If you need to call the hospital, please call the number for the hospital you want below, and a receptionist will help to direct your where you want to go:

• Basildon - 01268 524900
• Mid Essex (Broomfield, Braintree, and St. Peter’s) - 01245 362000
• Southend - 01702 435555.

If you want to speak to a specialist nurse for a learning disability, you can find their contact details at the bottom of this page.

If you need to speak to a learning specialist nurse for a learning disability, please choose the hospital that you live closest to and contact them:

Basildon Hospital - Dave Thompson, call 01268 524900 and press 8064 or email Dave.Thompson8@nhs.net

Southend Hospital - Paula Pearl, call 01702 435555 and press 6448 or email Paula.Pearl@nhs.net

Broomfield Hospital - Shahnaz Begum, call 01245 362000 and press 4741 or email Shahnaz.begum14@nhs.net

You can also contact the team at mse.learningdisabilities@nhs.net.

EasyHealth website - the easyhealth website has lots of health information that is easy to understand. Visit https://www.easyhealth.org.uk for more information.

Unhappy about your care - if you are unhappy with anything that happened during your visit to the hospital, we want you to tell us - we want to hear your views. Click Giving feedback or making a complaint about your health care to find out about making a complaint.

Useful videos

Consent -  giving your consent

Accident and Emergency (A&E) -  coming to the A&E department

Visiting -  about your visit to hospital

Sepsis -  watch this video to find out some important information about sepsis or download our Sepsis easy read leaflet [pdf].

For information about Covid-19, you can download:

• Covid-19 learning disability hospital summary [pdf]
• Covid 19 easy read vaccination leaflet [pdf].

You can find out more about our latest visiting guidance, here https://www.mse.nhs.uk/coronavirus-covid-19.