Why do some partners stay all day?

I dont think people should be there for too long. It's not fair on others. I remember hospital as a young woman and my parents totally stressing me out by insisting on being there. I hate fussing and that's literally what they did all day long. I couldn't sleep or rest with them sitting there gaping at me. They had no interest in hearing what i wanted and kept insisting. I had a longer stint in my mid 30s, about a week and didn't tell anyone except DH. He visited every day for an hour or two and dropped in what I wanted. I looked forward to his visits but was always relieved when he left. I was there to rest and I prefer to rest alone.

When your in hospital with the same people for weeks or months at a time. You bond over all the embarrassing things that happen in hospital like every morning the nurse going round the room asking the stool chart questions. Peeing and pooing infront of each other and hearing each others medical problems. Talking about the staff you like and don't like etc its just what happens when your with people for that long. I've made some great friends in hospital who I still speak to.

I literally had to be on the ward as much as possible for my mum when she was admitted to advocate for her and provide support and care.

She had no history of dementia and had probably suffered a stroke plus had UTI but one of the doctors misread handwritten notes and read arthritis as Alzheimer’s. They were unaware that she had RA and had been seen by rheumatology in the same hospital for years. Her routine medication was stopped abruptly and she was admitted to a dementia ward where her delirium was ignored despite sudden onset of delusional beliefs and hallucinations.

Her personal care including feeding and fluid intake was shocking. I lived 250 miles away and had primary aged DC with additional needs but the staff expected me to be on the ward all day and every day to keep her calm, order her meals, make sure she ate and drank etc. If I left overnight or, god forbid, was not there at the weekend, when I went back I was made to feel guilty that I had left and would be told that she had had a fall, had been distressed etc (because I hadn’t been there to provide 1:1, only I could calm her when she was distressed).

In my absence, she was given no support to eat, drink, wash or change into clean clothes. When I returned she would have an electronic monitor clipped to her clothes so she didn’t fall out of bed (again) but the nurse call device would be deliberately placed out of her reach. They were aware of acute deterioration and she was supposed to have high calorie meals and fluid intake measured but no support to actually eat or drink was provided by anyone other than me.

It’s very distressing to watch a loved one deteriorate due to lack of basic care whilst in hospital because it exceeds the duties of health care workers but is not the duty of nurses or doctors. It is made worse when you are made to feel that it is not the failure of the health service but a personal failure because it is actually your duty to ensure personal care.

I’d prefer the health service to be honest about what will and won’t be provided so that families, additional insurance, the LA can plan to meet the gap.

OP in your case it does sound like the ‘visitor’ was sticking around waiting for discharge - there can be a wait of hours before the paperwork is completed.

I am lucky enough that I don't end up that often in hospital, but the very last thing I want to do is communicate let alone bond with other patients. I might make the odd friend, I am not antisocial at all, but being in the hospital at the same time doesn't mean we have anything in common.

Same with commuting trains, school gates.. you can make friends, but you don't have to talk to everyone. Partner seem to stop people from trying to intrude.

I'd rather have my partner all day (or sister, or brother, someone) to create some kind of "barrier" against other people in the ward

It's even worst when a patient complains about closed curtains and nurses tries to get them all open because it's the preference of one person! (happened to me, she wanted a "brighter" room, the selfish idiot). When you can't get out of ben, it's near impossible to close the curtains again yourself.

It's not visitors the problem and the lack of privacy, dignity and well being, it's people in general, most of them other patients. Some even seem to think there's some kind of "community" because you have the ill fortune to end up on the same ward.

Partner any time!

I don't know the other patients is quite different its amazing how quickly you bond with others patients in your room when you're staying in but random people coming and going is definitely different

my point was that the issue is to be in close proximity to a strange ANYONE.

Being on a ward make a lot of us uncomfortable, it's 2025 it's unacceptable. Next curtain being a visitor or another patient makes no difference, they're just as bad as each other.

100% i had an awful experience where the visitor a husband of someone who kind of knew me from work (customer) not only listened in but started talking to me about it and not in a nice way kind of a see nothing wrong with you kind of way and that I needed to get back to work . It was one test that came back good id already been in a month and there was lots wrong id had a brain bleed which had caused allsorts of problems. It still really annoys me

I don't think anybody here is suggesting that patients who need extra care shouldn't have their carers there to help them. I think the objection is to visitors hanging around all day every day for no reason other than company and turning up and leaving when they feel like (or, in the case of my DF, who is a "camper", because they can't manage their own anxiety about their loved one if they're not there all the time watching).

You're not wrong about the state of care, and it is woeful, and if your loved one is vulnerable and can't self advocate or understand things about their treatment, having a carer and advocate is essential. But whole families camping out from breakfast until bed time really isn't helping the staff, either. It's also a catch 22 - if someone has a visitor all day, they're more likely to leave them to it and they might miss things.

Exactly, when I was in with both of them there was a few occasions when other patients shouted over, excuse me you wouldn’t mind passing me x,y,z off the bedside table or moving this etc because they didn’t have any visitors and didn’t want to bother the nurses.

Because they are ill and vulnerable and cannot care for or advocate for themselves

Yes - excellent reasons not to allow random strangers, with no background cheks, into a patient's space.

I'm sure a lot of women wouldn't care. But being semi clothed, vulnerable, in pain and performing a bodily function in close proximity to a strange man is going to make a lot of women uncomfortable, to say the least. I don't think that's too much of a stretch to be honest.

Nothing changes when you sit back and just throw your hands in the air and just accept it. The reason its as bad as it is in some hospitals is because the public just passively accept it and tell others to be “grateful” for because its “free”.

In the mean time random men are allowed onto women’s wards, sexual and physical assaults take place and posters like you think this is ok.

Worth noting also that not all hospitals allow this. If the safety and privacy of patients is too expensive in some hospitals how come others deliver a better and safer service?

Honestly the notion that this is what we have to accept is an excellent reason for revisiting the whole model in favour of one which actually provides safe and modern care.

That is absolutely not true.

I have often visited family in hospital and there are always people who can tell you full details of the other patients' lives

Because they are ill and vulnerable and cannot care for or advocate for themselves. Wards are hugely understaffed and unfortunately do not care for people in the way they should when it come to the basics like eating, washing, dressing and toileting.

I would be spending as much time as possible at the hospital with a loved one to ensure they are properly cared for!

I can see it from both side loads of visitors piss me off you are so exhausted from being woken up all night for obs and then being woken up at 6 am for meds that it would be nice to be able to sleep a bit in the day and its so loud when all these visitors are there and it especially pisses me of now when you see visitors live streaming on tiktok in hospital wards there is no privacy but on the otherside of that there is no actual nursing or care anymore so relatives are the ones who end up having to do it so need to be there to do it. I've been in hospital when there are loads of visitors and I've been in when wards are locked down due to covid. The closed ward where definitely nicer but I'm still young and capable it would be very different if I was reliant on someone having to care for me.

Exactly this.
My dad has been in and out of hospital recently- I was visiting HIM- not eavesdropping on anyone else.
Nobody gives a shit about anyone other than the person they are visiting- get over yourselves.

what make you think they want to do that in front of a strange woman, just because she happens to be a patient?

Makes no difference if it's male or female for many of us, it's embarrassing and unwanted. Having visitors helping out someone makes no difference, A ward is a ward.

Yes OP, very embarrassing. At a time when you are at your most vulnerable too. And no, unless there are particular circumstances (patient dying or really needs extra support) then there's no need for male visitors to hang around all day. I doubt many women would want to piss and poo when they're in extreme pain and can hardly move, under the nose of a strange bloke. If it's no big deal then why the furore about transwomen in ladies loos?

It’s not just men (I’m a woman) but happen to have spent a lot of times as a visitor in hospitals recently as both parents have had joint replacements. I wasn’t ever listening to conversations between the other patients and nurses.

I recently had a baby and the postnatal ward was hell. I stayed for two nights, despite wanting to go home immediately, to get breastfeeding established. Having barely slept for four days prior because of various induction attempts followed by a c-section, the ward seemed designed to keep you awake as much as possible. Partners were allowed to stay 24 hours a day - I don’t mind that in principle but there was no expectation that anyone would be quiet or turn out lights overnight. One woman had repeated loud phone calls with her partner - on speakerphone! - at all hours of the night. On the Saturday, the ward was packed full all day with visitors. Then there were other things like being woken a couple of minutes after managing to start napping by your curtains being flung back to give you a meal menu. That, combined with actually necessary interruptions to take observations, needing to feed frequently and people’s babies all crying at different times, meant that I left feeling an absolute shell of myself having been unable to begin to recover in any way. Obviously the feeding and crying babies part is unavoidable but the other elements could and should be much better controlled. It was almost impossible to take the advice of sleeping when your baby sleeps because it was so bright and noisy most of the day and night.

in many cases, if they could manage by themselves, they wouldn't be in hospital.

Hospital is not a pleasant place to be, it's great to have company when you can.

Countries with bedrooms, and no outdated and depressing communal wards have much less issues.

It doesn't matter if someone is a patient or a visitor frankly, they're still "people", some of us suffer from the lack of privacy full stop anyway.

I absolutely felt like that on the maternity ward after giving birth. Men/partners were allowed overnight and I hated it. Nice for the other women to have help, I know, but I was on my own and the most vulnerable I’ve ever been and found it uncomfortable.

Enforce scheduled visiting times. Post hysterectomy, I was exhausted and in pain and did not want to hear all the extra visitor noises. Some patients had the world and his wife visit, all day every day for the 6 days I was in.

I receive calls in work every day of people describing absolutely awful care in hospital due to under staffing mostly. I think it's important now that people have someone who cares about them to help advocate for them. It's also really lonely for a lot of people who are in hospital for a longer period, and having someone with them can help their mental health and ultimately their physical recovery.