boy, do i long for the days when visiting hours were 2-4 and 6-8!! just when did this ridiculous idea of "free for all" visiting based on having family and friends around for faster healing get so out of hand??
in my facility the hours are 0800-2100 hrs. there are no restrictions as to age/number of visitors/how long they can stay...etc...it is a free for all and i can not stand it. i spend a good part of my day working around visitors, answering and re-answering questions from visitors, asking visitors to step out of the room and then getting nasty comments from those visitors about my request.
patients have no privacy and the embarrassment that many have to endure because of visitors is unacceptable. preps/procedures have to be done with a parade of people in and out all day. am care and adls have to be accomplished with an audience of strangers. curtains are pulled for privacy only to have visitors pull them open or worse yet, step in anyway and then berate us for "keeping them out."
children are brought in and allowed to crawl on the floor. babies are in strollers and are not kept quiet or removed.
visitors want to know everything from soup to nuts about what is being done to their aunt, uncle, minister, neighbor, friend down the street. when we cite hipaa they raise the roof.
visitors ignore precaution /isolation signs and then bad mouth us when aunt tilley gets sicker. and then we wonder why mrsa and c-diff are spreading like wildfire.
please, someone....stop this madness! we can not do our jobs properly anymore...all in the name of patient satisfaction! hogwash! :angryfire
Specializes in icu, er, transplant, case management, ps.
I haven't worked for eighteen years but I have been a patient more times then I care to remember. And in several different hospitals, in several different states. Most, in the last eight years, have had open visiting hours. But I have never observed either myself or my room mate being over run with visitors. What I have found hard to find, in the last eight years, has been a lack of staff and response to call lights. If I am very lucky, I get a voice from the ceiling asking what I want. And if I am extremely lucky, a staff person will respond to my room , answering my request for assistance to the bathroom or a bedpan, or to check my IV site, or for pain medication. One of the few times I had an immediate response was the twenty-one days I spent in an ICU. I am well aware of the short staffing and the higher patient load per nurse. I wonder if some patient's families don't gather around for the same reason I have observed, lack of adequate staffing.
The children and babies have never been allow on any of the units I have been a patient on, so no problems. And I am surprised that hospitals allow this. The OP indeed has a facility that is out of control. Until the administration takes charge or is sued for millions, she will continue to have problems. I would quit.
I find that most patients are on their call light for little things a lot less when they have visitors. Visitors can help when they need a refill on their ice water or with fluffing their pillows. At my facility, visitors can also go into the patient pantry and get things like jello, pudding, and soda for the patient. Patients usually seem happier and complain less when they have visitors, so that makes my job a bit easier too.
Sometimes I do get a little frustrated with visitors, but it's not the norm. One time, I had a patient who really wanted a cigarette and was confused. We have a protocol at my facility that the doctor can order, that contains standing orders for nicotine patches, lozenges, gum, and inhalers. The nurse can choose from these orders what to give to the patient. I was working on getting the patient some inhalers and a patch, when I overheard the family member saying "The nurse is going to bring you a lighter, Mom.", while giving the patient a straw cut to the length of a cigarette. I had to pull her aside and let her know that her behavior was not helpful.
More recently, a family member started grilling me about the patient's condition the second I walked into the room to get vitals and do my initial "data collection". I had just gotten there, only knew what I knew about the patient from a quick glance at the H&P and the verbal report I had just received, so I really didn't know the answers to the family member's questions. Plus, they were questions like "What did the doctor say about ______?". How the heck should I know what the doctor said? I wasn't here when he rounded, I haven't worked with your family member before, so I don't know her, and I just got here five minutes ago! Ask your family member!
Things like that bug me, but they don't happen often. Usually, visitors are a good thing.
I detest the seemingly 25+ hour visiting times and the lack of enforcement when it comes to those closing times. It makes the job harder and more stressful when you have to not only cater to the patient but to the extended family as well. People tend to get mad when I ask them to please keep their child quiet as their screaming and yelling isn't appropriate in a hospital. Or they get mad when asking questions that legally I cannot answer. Or the whole family wants sodas and food and grrrrr.......
That's one reason I do nights now, although the problem isn't as bad at nights it's still there in some form or fashion.
We are open 24hours and just this past weekend I found my voice shaking and my hands clenching when I was attempting to explain to a wife that she cant just take her husbands bipap mask off at 0500 because she wants to wean him off 02. His sats were 72!!!! I told her the mask had to go back on, it was only 0500 breakfast wouldnt be here for another 2.5 hours, he needs to get his rest I turned his light off. I had not even got back to the nursing station and his mask was back off and his lights on. She wanted to stand him next to the bed so he could regain his strength!!!
Lord help me, this was the same wife that brought him in his pack of smokes that he smoked in the BR then every family member adimantly denied it, even though you could still physically see the smoke in the room!!!!
He made the slightest of wimper/snore in the night and she jumped up and questioned him. "Bob you want to sit up? are you cold, are you hungry, are you thirsty, you want your mask off"....No lady he groaned---in his sleep---LET HIM SLEEP.
O my that poor guy! Can you imagine how his entire marriage has been? Did the wife have her own set of problems? Maybe some memory problems or confusion? Sheesh! I would have pulled all my hair out dealing with that mess!
Semiprivate rooms are crowded with beds and chairs anyway...Add four visitors per patient and it's chaos...Visiting hours are over after my shift begins and boy am I glad when they anounce that visitors have to leave in fifteen minutes...
And I find that visitors that stay overnight ask for water and juice and snacks also...This doesn't bother me so much unless they want me to act like their waitress instead of their family member's nurse...
There has to be control maintained over visiting hours and number of visitors. I understand that those of you that have been recent patients cite the visitors as being the bright spot in your day. However, the important thing is that we do not allow MRSA/VRE/CDIFF to spread to the visitors and community, and that the patient is well rested so they can GET WELL.
I am a complete stickler for isolation precautions in my rooms. Visitors are wearing gowns and gloves if their loved one is on contact. If they don't wish to wear them, they have to leave. I will not allow Great-Aunt Frannie to go home and touch her 3 week old grandson with Cdiff hands. It does not always make me popular with the visitors. I allow babies/children to visit FROM THE DOOR. Meaning, they can briefly wave and say hi to grandma, but they are not coming in the room at all. I do not want a community MRSA infection traced back to little Johnny hopping on Grandma's ICU bed (with his skinned knees) during my shift.
I believe that visitors are good for patients. I would like to see some hard academic evidence that patients who have 4 visitors at a time recover faster. What about in a semi-private room? Does their roommate recover faster? I bet their roommate is angry and exhausted, because of the constant traffic and lack of sleep. Our rooms are private, so I am rather lax about visiting times, but not about the number of visitors. I need that room to work.
Specializes in CCU, SICU, CVSICU, Precepting & Teaching.
i hear what your saying, but i have to admit that while i was in the hospital (10 days) my only bright time was when i had visitors. staff is so busy and sleep is so difficult that i really needed (and wanted) visitors. my infant son was in the hospital for 6 weeks when he was first born. a 2 hr 2 person visiting schedule would not have worked at all. there was no way dad and i would leave his side. i know its frustrating and i'll be walking in your shoes soon, but visitors are so important to patients. i agree there should be some guidelines (how many, volume control, etc), but loved ones are going to come and they're going to stay. this is our job, but it is the pts home for whatever length their stay is. i don't mean to upset anyone, i just wanted to say how i felt during my stay and my son's.
i appreciate how you feel as a patient. please come back and tell us if you still feel the same way after you've been a nurse for a couple of years.
Specializes in CCU, SICU, CVSICU, Precepting & Teaching.
visitors can be a huge pita. talk to your nurse manager voice your concerns. let him/her know that patient needs and care are being compromised due to visitors. we have several notices posted around our unit that reads something like this:
we here at x hospital understand that your family members illness/trauma can be a very emotional time for your family. the nurses are here to provide quality care during a critical time. if at any time the nurse feels that care is being compromised or the patient is in need of respite from visitors they will be asked to leave.
Quiet, unassuming, helpful, wanted-they can stay. Loud, in my way or the patients, PITA, or interfering-OUT THEY GO!
I go out of my way to be nice to visitors and encourage close family members to stay. BUT THEY MUST STEP OUT DURING PROCEDURES, QUESTIONS AND ANYTHING ELSE I THINK IS SENSITIVE. Patient need us to advocate for them. Just because mom diapered their baby behinds doesn't mean adult patient wants mom there for pericare! It's easier to move them out than to place it on the patient.
If a patient has a private room, whatever...I don't care about amount....however, if they are in the hall, muliple roommates, or with little to no room they can have no more than 2 visitors.
We actually call security if they are out of control!
Specializes in CCU, SICU, CVSICU, Precepting & Teaching.
i agree with the sentiment that visitors are out of control. as a patient, it was excrutiating for me to deal with my roommate's constant stream of very loud visitors with their burgers and fries (i was nauseated and npo), their big gulps (i was thirsty and npo) and their screaming children (i had a csf leak and the resulting headache). nor did the nurse ask my roommate's visitors to leave when i had to use the bedpan. it was excrutiating to try to urinate knowing that there were several strangers just on the other side of that very thin curtain, well within earshot.
when my husband was in the hospital with ulcerative colitis, his roommate's visitors were always in their shared bathroom meaning he had to wait. when you're having upward of 30 stools a day, waiting is not always an option!
i've been a nurse for a long time. i've had overnight visitors demanding my time to fetch them drinks and snacks late at night, visitors who drank out of the sterile water left at the bedside and one who used the sterile saline as a spitoon. (fortunately that was obvious, unlike the drinking.) one visitor left her two toddlers with her sick grandmother ("because granny always watches them when i go out"), one went through my purse while i was briefly out of the room, and several have stolen wallets and purses belonging to my co-workers. i've been asked to buy food for the visitors, (they didn't like what was on the patient's tray and the cafeteria was too far to walk), toilet the visitors (because the patient's wife, who brought her mother-in-law in to visit "doesn't like to do that"), and to tell a visitor that the patient wanted to break up with her. it used to be that visitors, like patients were polite, respectful and grateful for all you were doing for the patient. not so much anymore.
i know we're all about customer service these days, but i honestly believe that it would help the nursing shortage a great deal if we made some reasonable, common-sense rules for visitors and then enforced them.
I'm med/surge and most of my patients are so tired and in so much pain that I feel bad when visitors show up and talk to them when it's clear they are trying to sleep. I have asked visitors to quiet down so the patient can get some rest because THEY JUST HAD SURGERY. Oy.
I always kick everyone out for ADL, etc. I'm firm but polite and leave no room for argument. They shouldn't be there unless the patient asks for the spouse, daughter, mom, etc. to stay and then it's fine. I have had several patients thank me for making sure their privacy remains intact. They are often afraid to offend visitors by saying they are tired which is a shame as it should be a given.
I work in a CICU where the only times we DON'T allow visitation are between 6:30 and 9 am and 6:30 and 9 pm. Visitors always have the potential to be annoying and can exhibit a gift for getting in your way. Information is the most valuable tool you have for getting their cooperation. I point to the monitors and give them the same parameters that I watch for in judging whether the patient is being "overstimulated" or tiring out. There are still a few contrary ones who won't cooperate easily, but most will leave the room as soon as I say it's time to give the patient a rest. We have very few that wish to stay overnight. It's almost as if that they trust us more, knowing that we don't try to keep them out.
On the "con" side, we often have to reinforce the "maximum of 3 visitors at a time" rule...
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woody62, RN
928 Posts
I haven't worked for eighteen years but I have been a patient more times then I care to remember. And in several different hospitals, in several different states. Most, in the last eight years, have had open visiting hours. But I have never observed either myself or my room mate being over run with visitors. What I have found hard to find, in the last eight years, has been a lack of staff and response to call lights. If I am very lucky, I get a voice from the ceiling asking what I want. And if I am extremely lucky, a staff person will respond to my room , answering my request for assistance to the bathroom or a bedpan, or to check my IV site, or for pain medication. One of the few times I had an immediate response was the twenty-one days I spent in an ICU. I am well aware of the short staffing and the higher patient load per nurse. I wonder if some patient's families don't gather around for the same reason I have observed, lack of adequate staffing.
The children and babies have never been allow on any of the units I have been a patient on, so no problems. And I am surprised that hospitals allow this. The OP indeed has a facility that is out of control. Until the administration takes charge or is sued for millions, she will continue to have problems. I would quit.
Woody:twocents: