Visiting Hour Policies in Intensive Care Units, Southern Iran

Dear Editor, Admission to intensive care unit (ICU) is potentially a stressful experience for both the patients and their families. In addition to pain and severity of the critical diseases, sleeplessness, immobility and overwhelming noises from ICU equipments, anxiety from overhearing the stranger and unfamiliar conversations of the staff and visitors about the patients' conditions, psychologically affect the ICU patient. 1-3 The critical condition of the patients could be a source of stress for the respective families as well, so that sometimes it is referred to as in-family crisis. 4,5 Nowadays, the role of families in the critical patients' recovery is considered very important, and professionals focus on family and patient-centered systems. Therefore, it has long been suggested that open and flexible visiting policies can positively affect such patients' conditions and consequently can help families cope with the crisis and promote their satisfaction. To investigate the current status of the visiting hours and policies, we carried out this descriptive cross-sectional study in summer 2009 in all 71 ICUs in Fars Province, south of Iran. A questionnaire based on a previous study, conducted in Italy, 3 was prepared and filled for each unit by a single researcher through face to face and telephone communication with respective head nurses. To this end, the ICUs consisting of general (20%), specialist (17%), neonatal/pediatric (18%) and cardiac (38%) units in private centers, university teaching and governmental non-teaching hospitals were enrolled. As the data were shown in the Table 1, restrictions were on the numbers and age of visitors, and hours of visits in all units. In 39.4% of the units no visits was allowed. In 15.5%, visiting time was 1.5-2 hours and in 23.9% was one hour a day in some of which the visits were through the glass windows due to the limitation of space and facilities. The main finding of the present survey was the uniform practicing restriction on the visiting policy in all ICUs. Gianini et al. similarly conducted a study in Italy and found almost the same results. 6 Tendency toward open policy has been reported from France (23%), UK (50%), and Sweden (70%). 7 These varying visiting policies might be due to different cultural and attitudinal factors in different communities. Restricted visiting hours dates back to the late 1800s and for a variety of reasons including creating more discipline in the wards and avoiding the transmission of infection. 8,9 Berti …