Open visitation in ICU

Ruby Vee, BSN · Jul 26, 2008

it's been many years since i worked in the sicu and from reading all of the posts on this topic it sounds like families have changed alot! but i am going to venture out and offer another perspective.
i had a left cva in the past. it was the most frightening event thus far in my life. i woke up in the middle of the night with right-sided paralysis and was totally aphasic. i knew i had a cva and was terrified. (i won't bore you with all the awful details of how i went to one er and was discharged and told to follow-up with a neurologist within 72 hours...etc...) when i finally got to a second hospital, after being driven there by a friend, i was first admitted to a regular floor! imagine being in your mid-thirties and admitted to a regular floor knowing you had a cva and the main concern of the admitting rn (i am sure he had minimal experience) was that i got on the scale so he could get an accurate weight! luckily i was at the hospital in which i was employed and the word traveled like wild fire...thank god no one paid attention to hippa because if i did not have nurse friends who came and took me to the icu (they got the icu nurse to get the physician order later) who knows what would have happened....anyhow i was of course terrified! even though i knew most of the nurses who cared for me in the unit i still felt better with my personal friends and family at my bedside. at one point i had over 20 visitors in my room, all hospital employees, the ones i worked with on a daily basis. i know my icu nurses wanted me to rest and they were looking out for my best interest when they asked visitors to leave. however lying in that bed not knowing if i would code, need to be intubated or if i was going to throw another clot and have another cva was very anxiety provoking to say the least and it was extremely comforting to have friends and family at my bedside to occupy me and take my focus off of being critical!
from a patient's perspective i think my visitors helped me remain as calm as i could possibly be considering the circumstances. i did not have visitors around the clock however i did have them frequently and to be honest i wish i could have had someone there with me 24 hours a day. yes the nurses came in and did their care however they had other patients to tend to and couldn't spend time with me other than the essentials. beleive me when i tell you i wanted someone in my room with me around the clock for at least the first couple of days. i was lucky because i had friends that worked at the hospital and ignored the visiting hours and came to visit as often as they could. it was a comfort to me and did not affect my healing process at all.
of course i need to add that none of my visitors were blatently disrespectful to any of the nurses. however a couple of the unit nurses were control freaks (sorry but you all know many of us have control issues) and were in fact snotty and disrespectful at times to my visitors. i would have responded to those nurses (and i would not have been very pleasant) however i was aphasic and could not utter anything coherent except the f word, which by the way, i did say pretty frequently. (still wonder why that was the only word i was able to say clearly...)
(for those who are interested, i recovered with minimal long-term effects and most people would not know i ever had a cva. i was very lucky and this experience taught me alot about how we in the health-care field act and how it is perceived by the patient!)
just another perspective...

glad you've recovered!

and just another perspective for you -- did you have a private room? or do you think 20 visitors was conducive to your roommate's healing? as the former roommate of a patient who had 15-20 visitors round the clock, i can assure you that all of those visitors were quite detrimental to both my peace of mind and my healing!

1033RN · Jul 30, 2008

I currently work in the Emergency Department of a Planetree facility...I don't recommend it. Planetree is supposed to put patients at ease and make patients and their visitors partners in care with the staff. At our hospital, Planetree has provided an acceptable excuse for patients and their visitors to become dictators of their care. Patient satisfaction surveys dictate clinical practice, not evidence based research. I am actively seeking alternative employment...got any leads?