Restricted visiting hours in ICUs: time to change.

THE SICKEST PATIENTS LIE IN INTENSIVE CARE UNITS (ICUs) facing fearful illness; surrounded by overwhelming noise from pulsating ventilators and monitors; invaded by the necessary ministrations of nurses; and overhearing, if they are awake, strange and portentous conversations. Professionals buzz about them, but these patients are mostly alone, separated from those who love them by restrictive ICU visiting policies, except at rigidly specified times or with the doled-out permission of the ICU staff. Restricting visiting in ICUs is neither caring, compassionate, nor necessary. Restricted hospital visiting hours began in the late 1800s for nonpaying patients in an attempt to establish order in the general wards. For many decades afterward, paying patients remained free to have visitors at almost any time in their private or semi-private rooms. In the 1960s, however, in an effort to protect the patient and the family from exhaustion caused by too many visitors (Kenneth Ludmerer, MD, Washington University, oral communication, April 23, 2004), hospitals instituted visiting hours broadly for both paying and nonpaying patients in ICUs (which were then being introduced) and the general wards. Today, most hospitals have liberalized visiting policies on intermediate care units, but strict ICU visiting hours are enforced despite increasing awareness that families have an active role in care, and despite increasing recognition among hospital staff of the rights and abilities of patients to make informed decisions. Perhaps the question to be answered is “Who is visiting whom?” In an effort to stabilize the details of ICU operations, health care institutions and professionals neglect the plausible assertion that they are the visitors in patients’ lives, not the other way around. Several months ago, the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) challenged a number of hospitals working on improvement of care to open their ICUs by instituting a totally unrestricted visiting policy. Several took up that challenge and have come forward to share what they learned from their tests of open visitation policies. Even proposing the idea of liberalizing ICU visiting hours, let alone implementing it, generates considerable resistance among nurses and physicians, who are largely focused on 3 worries: increased physiologic stress for the patient, interference with the provision of care, and physical and mental exhaustion of family and friends. While these concerns may seem reasonable, the evidence from the recent experiences at hospitals working with IHI, as well as from a small but growing body of literature, tell quite a different story. Physiologic Stress for the Patient. The concern that the patient should be left alone to rest incorrectly assumes that family presence at the bedside causes stress. The empirical literature suggests that the presence of family and friends tends to reassure and soothe the patient, providing sensory organization in an overstimulated environment and familiarity in unfamiliar surroundings. Visits of family and friends do not usually increase patients’ stress levels, as measured by blood pressure, heart rate, and intracranial pressure, but may in fact lower them. Nursing visits, on the other hand, often increase stress. However, liberalizing visiting hours may not be good for every patient. The goal is not universal implementation of unrestricted ICU visiting policies, but rather the achievement of patients’ control over the circumstances of their own care. It is important that patients be able to decide who can visit them and when, and accomplishing this requires that there not be a universal restriction outside the control of individual patients and families. Instead, patients who can do so should be allowed to determine their own visiting hours, and this information should be relayed to their family and friends. In other circumstances, family preferences may appropriately control the decision. Barriers to Provision of Care. The second concern is that the unrestricted presence of loved ones at the bedside will make it more difficult for nurses and physicians to do their jobs and may interfere with the delivery of care. The evidence suggests, however, that the family more often serves as a helpful support structure, increasing opportunities for patient and family education, and facilitating communication between the patient and clinicians. Family members may also be able to provide feedback to nurses and physicians more effectively than the critically ill patient can, creating a better working relationship for all.