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
Out of control is a nice way to put it! OMG as bad as the last flu season was there were family members bringing newborns-literally to visit aunts, uncles whoever to visit- one pt I had had her sister in the room who brought her newborn to visit, oh heres the kicker in isolation too. I told her that baby had to go-with every other pt on the floor having the flu and practically all staff coughing and sneezing. Fortunately they complied, this pt had actually had her own toddler in the room over the weekend, like spend the night with her! When told a family member would have to p/u the child she started yelling, cussing, upset! I've had family members drop off kids of pts and not return! :angryfire Taking away from patient care having to deal with social worker issues-of course its a saturday night, I guess auntie so-so has to get her party on. I have had pts in isolation for active TB, signs every where they still head on in the room with kids,infants in tow! Thats another that burns me up! The saddest was a older lady I had who had a bad fall A&O 1-2 she did better with her husband there, he was A&O x3 but unsteady on his feet he would try to care for her-his family left him there in her room all day- it broke my heart to tell them that we couldn't be libel for him falling I caught him myself tripping over his wife's fall precaution mats. I know a nurse on a peds floor who told me parents dc IV's, and tell the doctors they are ready to be discharged. It is really out of control and I agree with the poster that the shortage of nurses can probably be attributed largely to these customer service issues.
I am in a hospital where on my unit we have open visiting hours. Most of the time this is not a problem. The rooms are private and small, we cannot accomodate lots of visitors per patient for "sleepovers" and for high acuity patients. If we have a problem with a visitor not complying to isolation precautions, it is brought to the ClinII, and rarely to security (if they refuse to comply with isolation, they are asked to leave so as to prevent the spread of infection).
I understand the need of the family to have someone there with the patient, especially if the illness is terminal, and the patient is dying. In those cases, we suck it up and work around the 18 family members on the "death watch", after all, would you be denied if your loved one is dying?
However, I have also had to deal with those whose family member is NOT dying, and really just needs to be left alone to recover from whatever crisis their chronic disease brought them to the hospital. The last was a very sweet old lady with CHF, who had an exacerbation, and was nowhere near dying (so fiesty!), and her children would bring the grandkids (spawn of Satan) to visit at 10-11 at night. She got NO rest, and neither did her neighbors. She was too sweet to kick them out and her relatives did not get that if you are in a hospital, you need all the sleep you can get. I finally got her alone one day and asked her (very diplomatically) if she would like us to intervene, and informed her that she has the right to refuse visitors after a certain time so she can rest. She gratefully said that she would like to get a full nights sleep, and to tell her relatives, it's nothing personal, but to visit her during the day or don't come. We told them, and they were ****** at first, but realized after explaining to them how horribly inconsiderate they had been. They never again visited her after 8pm.
Talking to the family is worth the trouble wjen you are advocating for your patient.
Open visiting hours do dnot mean you cannot set limits... You will learn who is OK with it and who is not, and enforce it accordingly.
Specializes in CCU, SICU, CVSICU, Precepting & Teaching.
i
open visiting hours do dnot mean you cannot set limits... you will learn who is ok with it and who is not, and enforce it accordingly.
amy
unfortunately, the problem will not go away just because one nurse or group of nurses has recognized a patient's need for rest and set some limits. the next nurse may be too inexperienced to realize that the patient does need rest, or from a culture that precludes limiting visitors and do away with the perfectly reasonable limits that have been set. and when the original nurse comes back the next day, she's going to have to negotiate the limits all over again, only this time she's going to be "the bad nurse" who won't let us party in granny's room.
We have visitors who are constantly walking into the nurses station and it bugs me to no end. No one walks behind the counter at a bank or a gorcery store, it is the same principle. THere is sensitive information in the nursing station and you have no business coming in there. Also I am happy to get you (the visitor) a cup of coffee when I have the time, but constant refills, warm blankets and extra pillows with snacks starts to be a bit much. If I can only find a couple of extra folding chairs, then I am sorry that is all I have. I don't have a half an hour to run around searching high and low for that sort of thing. 20 people don't need to be holding a party in a room with a sick patient at midnight anyway. I also can't keep reheating all of your KFC and pizza hut food because you want to snack on it every 45 minutes. Enough is enough!
Honestly, I can't figure out for the life of my why some of them want to stay for such long periods. Here we have these tiny crowded, 2-patient rooms -- and you'll have one patient who makes a totally huge BM, or is nauseous and vomiting, or having demented outbursts -- then the "family" sits there and rolls their eyes or makes comments -- I mean, it's just totally horrible for patients who need privacy and rest, or who are very ill. I think it's awful. I myself would HATE having a roommate with 100 visitors while I was trying to recuperate.
One nice family member or two who are there to TRULY help are great. When it gets to be a "show" and we have the church members, every relative within a 200 mile radius, every friend -- and all of them commenting to us nurses and/or questioning everything we're doing -- they need to GO HOME.
I think there needs to be a balance -- and strict guidelines. Next we'll have family members suing for contracting communicable diseases or something.
I've found working dayshift weekends are HORRID with all the family members visiting.
There is that one type of family member that I just can't stand -- up and walking around, pacing, won't sit down, in your way as you try to maneuver around a tiny, overcrowded room w/ all the equipment, watching every move you make -- asking: "what's THAT? What are you giving him? Why? When's the doc coming? When can he go home? (always seems to be the female spouse .... )
Or, you have the elder family patricarch/matriarch for whom everyone cowtows and bows down to -- and you, the nurse, are expected to do the same!! Arrrrgggghhh -- I could drop kick them all.
And the WORST thing that family members do that grinds my gears? It's stalking the nursing station and making requests when they know dARN WELL how to call me on my phone, see me every single hour as I round of their stay. I mean -- WHY??? Ask YOUR nurse -- not every other nurse on shift as they are NOT taking care of your mom/dad/whomever.
We have visitors who are constantly walking into the nurses station and it bugs me to no end. No one walks behind the counter at a bank or a gorcery store, it is the same principle.
That really bothers me as well. And when they sit in one of our chairs, like they live there, argh!!
Specializes in CCU, SICU, CVSICU, Precepting & Teaching.
that really bothers me as well. and when they sit in one of our chairs, like they live there, argh!!
the chairs thing bugs me as well! when i was in my 20s and 30s i didn't mind as much, but i'm older now and need to sit to chart -- otherwise i go home in a lot of pain. if i have to stand because i'm busy it's one thing, but if i have to stand because the family is camping out and managment won't support my need to sit down from time to time that's something else again. and management won't take our side over the family, so there you go.
OMG -- they walk into the nurses station and SIT DOWN??
I would just probably self implode at that point.
We bring unruly patients in to the NS for observation -- but have never had family members in there just to sit. I could not deal.
They do stand at the windows, though, for 20 minutes at a time, just to ask to have their pillows fluffed or some such thing. They just can't seem to figure out how to page their nurse using either their phone or call light. I mean -- they have a DIRECT line to us and we carry phones. How hard it is to dial four numbers???
I cannot stand the family members who are armend with notepad and pen at the bedside. Having to stop as he/she jots down what I say/do is a waste of my valuable time and that of my other patients.
Most of the time, the patient is there with minor health issues and the family act as if they are going to die tonight.
okay first off I have to say that this made me feel horrible! I had no Idea that the things I was doing were prolly driving my nurses nuts. My fiance was in the hospital for 6 days with a significant head wound. They had a lot of trouble intubating him so he had a really sore throat and we brought popsicles, but they were locked in this room the nurses had so evry time we needed one i had to ask. I was also told by the very first docotor I talked to ( while in APU after surgery) that I would have to learn how to do all the dressings myself ( for the next 3 months). So I am sure I barraged them with questions.We did have one person in the room at all times me or his dad that flew down from jersey, but we did try to limit everyone else. I can honestly say that it is not always the family. We had a huge amount of people, people from his work, pastors of people we knew, none of these people were asked to come so we kinda had to develope a way of quickly kicking them out. I would have been very releived if a nurse had given us the option of not allowing any other visitors. Sorry Sorry Sorry!
okay first off I have to say that this made me feel horrible! I had no Idea that the things I was doing were prolly driving my nurses nuts. My fiance was in the hospital for 6 days with a significant head wound. They had a lot of trouble intubating him so he had a really sore throat and we brought popsicles, but they were locked in this room the nurses had so evry time we needed one i had to ask. I was also told by the very first docotor I talked to ( while in APU after surgery) that I would have to learn how to do all the dressings myself ( for the next 3 months). So I am sure I barraged them with questions.We did have one person in the room at all times me or his dad that flew down from jersey, but we did try to limit everyone else. I can honestly say that it is not always the family. We had a huge amount of people, people from his work, pastors of people we knew, none of these people were asked to come so we kinda had to develope a way of quickly kicking them out. I would have been very releived if a nurse had given us the option of not allowing any other visitors. Sorry Sorry Sorry!
Some education may have helped you ...
Intubation is a life-saving measure. However, it is a foreign body/piece of plastic in your throat. Irritation is to be expected and is certainly uncomfortable, but very small potatoes in the big scheme of caring for a patient whose critical illness/injury has made intubation necessary in the first place.
That "room that the nurses had" was the kitchen for that unit and, I'm just guessing here, the only place with a freezer to hold the popsicles.
The non-clinical management of many hospitals have concluded, based on input from families, that open visitation 24/7 is conducive to patient healing despite voluminous medical evidence to the contrary. Some nurses know full well that to restrict visitors for a patient, despite the patient's critical condition, would cost them their job.
The MD who told you very early on about the need for ongoing dressing changes did so with the knowledge that this is not every-day stuff for patients/families/significant others ... and it takes some time to recover from the initial shock of what has happened and adjust to a new reality i.e., my significant other has had a life-threatening injury but is now stable ... he will need continued care for a significant period of time ... I have a role to play in his continued care. It simply takes time for us humans to adjust to new realities. Hospital staff are well aware of this, and often introduce things "early in the game" so that you have time to adjust to the idea of doing dressing changes so that you are then at a later time ready to actually learn from the nurse how to complete this task.
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.
YES!!!!! After one of my surgeries (they are cranio facial surgeries the insision is across the top of my head from ear to ear) I had a roomate that had, 2 TV's blairing, she was crying (that is ok she is in pain), her family (all 6 or 8 of them) were talking loudly at all hours of the day or night.
My mom raised hell that time. I got a private room. I was not able to heal becuase of what was going on in the next bed.
puggy232
72 Posts
Out of control is a nice way to put it! OMG as bad as the last flu season was there were family members bringing newborns-literally to visit aunts, uncles whoever to visit- one pt I had had her sister in the room who brought her newborn to visit, oh heres the kicker in isolation too. I told her that baby had to go-with every other pt on the floor having the flu and practically all staff coughing and sneezing. Fortunately they complied, this pt had actually had her own toddler in the room over the weekend, like spend the night with her! When told a family member would have to p/u the child she started yelling, cussing, upset! I've had family members drop off kids of pts and not return! :angryfire Taking away from patient care having to deal with social worker issues-of course its a saturday night, I guess auntie so-so has to get her party on. I have had pts in isolation for active TB, signs every where they still head on in the room with kids,infants in tow! Thats another that burns me up!
The saddest was a older lady I had who had a bad fall A&O 1-2 she did better with her husband there, he was A&O x3 but unsteady on his feet he would try to care for her-his family left him there in her room all day- it broke my heart to tell them that we couldn't be libel for him falling I caught him myself tripping over his wife's fall precaution mats. I know a nurse on a peds floor who told me parents dc IV's, and tell the doctors they are ready to be discharged. It is really out of control and I agree with the poster that the shortage of nurses can probably be attributed largely to these customer service issues.