Family zone in PICU pt rooms

[bame rn]

Hi,

We are redeveloping our PICU. The new unit will have private patient rooms. There will be a "family zone" in the room with a narrow sleeper sofa.

What are your thoughts on parents rooming-in in PICU?

We are a very family friendly unit, but I wonder if sleeping in a critical ill family member's room is the best option?

My concern is parental sleep depravation leading to increased stress and difficulty coping in an already stressful situation.

If parents do not sleep at the bedside, should there be enough parent sleep rooms available for all patients?

Currently we do not have enough room and every night is a challenge to find a makeshift area for families to stay overnight.

[Sloan RN]

It's always kinda weird for me to hear other PICU nurses being taken aback by family members sleeping in the rooms because it's always been the norm where I work. There are 3 people allowed in the room during the day (before 2100)...of course adjustments are sometimes made depending on the patient situation. At night, 2 people are allowed to be in the hospital per patient (not just in the room; so only two people can stay in the hospital period, everyone else has to go home or wherever). There's a chair in the back of the room that pulls out and is big enough for one person to sleep on; there's also a handful of sleep rooms, but not enough for each patient, so priority is given to parents of the sickest kids and the kids from far away. There's a rocking chair for the second parent if they insist on also staying in the room overnight (they are NOT allowed to sleep on the floor and we don't provide extra pull-out chairs due to space constraints) but that doesn't happen often.

The pull-out chair absolutely has to stay in the back of the room (away from the actual bedside) because it's heavy and hard to move quickly in an emergency. Parents understand that at least one overhead light has to stay on all night so the nurse can see the patient, and if procedures go on in the middle of the night they have to leave the room for those. These rules are the same for all our patients, even the ones on ECMO. It's just the norm for our unit and really hasn't been a problem.

Maybe it helps that the pull-out chair goes in the back of the room, behind the bed, so it's really not in my way at all.

[NotReady4PrimeTime, RN]

Space constraints are the major consideration on my unit. Our LARGEST patient room is half the size of the standard 250+ sq ft ICU room, and will often have TWO patients in it. We have 15 open beds crammed into a space suitable for maybe 2/3 that many. There just isn't room to have people sleeping in there, although they're quite welcome to sit in a chair at the bedside overnight. Most of us look the other way if they fall asleep.