Family visitation in ICU

[bfjworr]

family visitation in icu

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hi...i just found this site yesterday....it looks like a great way to get to know people and find out current opinions about nursing issues....

i am currently working in a busy community hospital in a 12 bed icu....

we have visitation issues....our unit use to allow family in to see patients indiscriminately....then limited visitation fro 11 - 4 am and 8 - 10 pm. family members are getting use to these hours but we still have many problems.....

would like to get other opinions.....

do you think their is a relationship between family presence in the icu and positive outcomes fro confused and ventilated patients?

do you think the length of stay is decreased because of family presence?

are the incidents of injury reduced by family presence?

how often do you use restraints? do you find you need restraints less when family are allowed more visitation?

do you have open visitation?

ths is a hot topic in our unit....many nurses think visitors interfere with patient care....others think they are helpful....but i believe each situation should be looked at individually - not all situations can be treated the same way.

thanks for your opinions :) :) :)

[mshultz]

This topic comes up from time to time, and as I have said before, I was glad my hospital had limited visiting hours when I was a patient. I spent 2.5 days in the ICU (should have been sent out after the first day, but the hospital was full). 2 visits of 30 minutes each was about as much visitation as I could handle, even with a well-behaved family. This arrangement allowed me privacy since visitors and nursing care did not occur at the same time.

I was also thankful I did not have to deal with a roommate and their visitors. Since I refused to watch TV, the other patients were probably glad they did not have me as a roommate either.:)

[nosajr5336]

I was a patient in the burn ICU unit at Tampa General, and they allowed 2 people at a time in to see me from noon till 8:00pm. They were allowed to stay as long as they wanted. For me personally, that helped in my recovery tremendously. The times when I did wake up, there was always someone there.

[ICU_floater]

I wanted to keep this thread active, as we too are going into open visitation. I sincerely wanted to thank everyone for their time.. I plan on printing out this forum so that my nurses can see that they're NOT alone and others share their concerns as well as the the possibilities to make this work. I'm going to post thread about patient privacy and policies as well as changing practice about meeting press gainey scores,meeting hospital privacy statements and being caught in the middle trying to make everyone happy, possibly at the expense of another patient who has a less demanding family.

please join me in this thread, your input affects our practice and your wisdom IS valuable.

thanks in advance.

sue