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
yep scores will go up for the few, educated families that understand neuro and icp!!!!!!!! the others, well, they go. i don't play with this, they are messing up my neuro patient outcomes and hurting them. at this point, not about the visitors.... bye-bye.
i feel your pain, but these people breed and perpetuate in droves. it is exhausting because you spend so much time on visitor policing that your patients get behind on care, their outcomes decline and then family is frustrated at their lack of progress. argh! i need to write a visitors for dummies book, but no one would read it, because it "doesn't apply to them" i digress. i don't care what others do, i intervene and become the "bad guy". surprisingly i'm ok with that and my patients receive excellent care. neuro is such a challenge..... "just wake up honey.... shaking patient.... wake up", icp 42.
"mam, time to go"
we are keeping to the open visiting policy meaning no restriction on hours, but only 2 at a time. guess what ???? our pt satisfaction scores have gone up. we also have decreased noise complaints.
i personally have a hard time with a family or friend of a critically ill head bleed who keeps shouting at them to show them 2 fingers because they saw the staff do that and the pt didn't do it. now they think they need to encourage the pt to do this never mind the elevating bp agitation, bucking the vent , and increasing icp. i have kicked those visitors out. i also have to ask them to leave when they start asking a vented pt to talk to them. this is usually after many gentle reminders that the pt cannot talk since he is on a vent to help him breathe and the tube prevents him from talking to them. i had this happen with a dying pt one night. this was before we terminally weaned him. the visitor clearly tanked kept telling "john don't you hear me man? why won't you talk to me?" . after many nice explinations he wouldn't quit so i made him leave.
i can only hope for things to get better with our continued study as to how visitors affect patients icp. should be common sense right?
i just love having to spell out every last word i use in simplest form to be googled and questioned later.
sure google says these two meds aren't good together, if google could see what i could, it would say get off the net, get involved and show up more often! have a clue and be involved instead of 10 years in to multiple diagnosises you want to be educated why your non-compliant diabetic parent is in renal failure and those sores you've all been ignoring will mean an amputation!!!!!!! write that down. it's called vancomyacin, and it will not fix 10 years of noncompliance.
while your at it, fill those dang blood pressure pills and have mom or dad take them. v-a-n-c-o-y-a-m-a-y-c-i-n......... and no you can't bring the baby into the isolation room! sry, on a long stretch with the note pad and an ileterate at the receiving end.
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.
sry, on a long stretch with the note pad and an ileterate at the receiving end.
Zookeeper3
1,361 Posts
yep scores will go up for the few, educated families that understand neuro and icp!!!!!!!! the others, well, they go. i don't play with this, they are messing up my neuro patient outcomes and hurting them. at this point, not about the visitors.... bye-bye.
i feel your pain, but these people breed and perpetuate in droves. it is exhausting because you spend so much time on visitor policing that your patients get behind on care, their outcomes decline and then family is frustrated at their lack of progress. argh! i need to write a visitors for dummies book, but no one would read it, because it "doesn't apply to them" i digress. i don't care what others do, i intervene and become the "bad guy". surprisingly i'm ok with that and my patients receive excellent care. neuro is such a challenge..... "just wake up honey.... shaking patient.... wake up", icp 42.
"mam, time to go"