No Visitors

Published

  1. What would you do?

    • 28
      Be firm. No visitors means no visitors.
    • 73
      Privately ask the patient if they want to see the visitor.
    • 1
      Let the patient's mother go in.

102 members have participated

Suppose you have an adult patient who has specified "no visitors except these couple of people", and the patient's mother wants to visit but is not on the list. How would you handle this?

This one drives me a little nutty.

Often it is the family members who draw up "the list" and expect the nurses to man the velvet rope like a nightclub bouncer.

Unless I am dealing with a safety issue (like the ex-wife that shot my patient who is still at large), I try to bounce this issue back to the family and let them police the visitation if there is not a safety issue.

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This drives me crazy too. I try my best but if I'm in another room I'm not going to run out and stop the person. I don't have time to be your hospital hostess manning the guest list. Either you are do not list me as being a patient or you are. You tell your family that so and so can not visit. Or better yet tell so and so yourself. I don't want to be in the middle of your family drama.

Sent from my iPhone using allnurses.com

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Specializes in ED; Med Surg.

We are a "news" or "no news" facility. No in between! I am not the concierge...

But what I absolutely LOVE (insert sarcasm here) is when they tell people they are there but don't give them the room. Then I am the fool who says "no we have no patient by that name" and they say "I just got off the phone with her". They finally figure it out but look at me as if I were buffoon of the year. This is after the patient and I have had a loooong talk about what "no news" means. Sigh.

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Specializes in M/S, pedi.

I am placed in that same situation all the time..."I'm sorry we have no pt by that name" and lo and behold they ordered a large iced coffee from friends! Oops I forgot to tell you where I was...

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Specializes in PDN; Burn; Phone triage.

Work on a locked ICU burn unit with a lot of sketch patients/family/etc.

The most frustrating thing is when the family makes a visitor list for the intubated and sedated patient and people start showing up that aren't on the list. Like. People claiming to children or wives or whatnot. You can't ask the patient and we have had family feuds played out between wives and mothers of the patient; also, wives and baby-mommas of patients.

/classy

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At the hospital I volunteer at we have policies in place for that. I am in CTU/ICU and both are locked of course but if someone is not on the friendly list we volunteers steer them away from the nurses/patient area and we talk to them until security arrives to take over and then they explain that the patient cannot be seen and asks them to leave. I personally had to ask an in-law to leave yesterday and luckily it went okay. She understood, but it was because she was a "talker" and was stressing her brother out. This was in CTU and security didn't have to intervene.

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At my last facility we had signs we could post on the patient door that said, "Please do not enter. Check in at nurse's station". We posted these for patients who requested limited visitors and kept a list at the secretary's desk.

I saw that on the door of a patients room at the hospital where my Mom was being treated. I would think that nurses at most hospitals already have enough to do without having to police who visits their patients.

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Specializes in ED; Med Surg.

Thank you poochiewoochie...so true! And secretaries and techs are way too busy for that as well. As RNperdiem said, they expect us to " man the velvet rope like a nightclub bouncer". Not happening on my shift, I can tell you.

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i don 't have time nor do I police these lists. Not my job. There have been a few real saftey issues and security is well aware when those occur

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Thank you poochiewoochie...so true! And secretaries and techs are way too busy for that as well. As RNperdiem said, they expect us to " man the velvet rope like a nightclub bouncer". Not happening on my shift, I can tell you.

You're welcome. I've been in the hospital too and judging from what I saw nurses have a lot to do-being someone's social director is not one of them. You guys barely have enough time to do what you already do.

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Specializes in Psych.

I work on a locked unit, so we often have patients not wanting to see the person who petitioned or was going to petition for them to be there, or the family member of the person they were .... yeah lets just say a mess. As a general rule, if patients do not tell us that so and so isnt to visit, or that they want asked before people visit we sign them visitor in.

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Specializes in ICU, CM, Geriatrics, Management.

Not knowing the patient and his / her presentation when giving the directive, it's very difficult to assess the best way to go on the poll question.

If alert and oriented, and totally clear in his desire, the choice becomes much more accurate.

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