To think that Ward I’m on should just abandon pretence they have visiting hours?

[MarieVanGoethem]

I’ve been in hospital since the 3rd of July. On current Ward since the 9th. I fully support a bit of flexibility with visitors where possible & needful, don’t get me wrong.

Thankfully I’ve not had a repeat of my time on the acute ward when I had a night with the [volatile & abusive] woman opposite me’s son sitting in the chair by her bed, where he was not meant to be, which was opposite my bed. (To be clear, he v definitely wasn’t allowed to be there & Official Questions Are Being Asked about why he wasn’t removed.)

However, when visiting hours are 2pm to 8pm, people rolling up before half nine is... & yes, that means visitors as well as patients are overhearing Ward Rounds. And people stay well beyond 8pm as well, about 10-10:30pm being the standard. So I’ve had several days where the bay has been full of the noise & bustle of extra people (I’ve only been allowed up unaccompanied since late Sunday afternoon; & my ability to walk as far as the day room with one of my visitors [which of course is ALSO busy anyway] was only reached a few days before & tbh couldn’t really be relied on) 12[+] hours.

I’m now at the point where I’m “just” waiting for a care package to be arranged. But “medically fit for discharge” =/= “boundingly good health”. Woman in bed opposite currently has about half a dozen visitors (who traipsed in last night at almost quarter to eleven to take some more pictures of the view to go with the ones they’d taken a few hours earlier - to be fair they’d spent a few of hours in the day room after a few in the Bay); woman beside me has 2.

Am willing to accept I may be being grumpy-frustrated because I’ve been v ill & it’ll be far too long for my liking before I’m better (well, for a given value of better, don’t think the complex health needs are going anywhere ); my NJ tube is irksome; I have a sore throat & earache; & although I am now allowed up alone I’m still walking like I’m doing some kind of interpretive dance & until yesterday my feed was running for 20 hours so was having to trundle an IV pole (a sticky-wheeled one, naturally) about most of the time (will get 6 hours off today though: upped the feed rate: woo!); etc etc Reasons, blah... but it does all just seem a bit pointless having the rules really; & I’ve people who could visit me if they trotted up outside hours, but it just feels Wrong. I’ve literally NEVER been on a Ward that ignores Visiting like this. Closest I’ve come is the time my friend was allowed to stay an extra 30 minutes (we didn’t notice time, they didn’t announce end visiting & nobody else was visiting our Bay at that point) because my nurse thought it was really good for me & we weren’t disturbing anyone.

So essentially, AIBU unreasonable to think this Ward needs to either stop pretending they have visiting hours; or actual enforce the 2pm-8pm rules [other than in specific/exceptional circumstances]?

We are allowed to go and look after DD, with severe epilepsy, learning difficulties and potentially challenging behaviour from as soon as we can get there, until bedtime.

She is deemed to need 1:1 care all her waking hours, and audio/visual monitoring all night. Our local hospital admits they don’t have the expertise to look after her!

Tbh, she was on a ward where by the look of it, there was her in her 20s, a woman in her 40s and the rest were old ladies with dementia. The elderly lady in the bed next to DD, was the one giving us abuse! She thought she was on a farm, where they had a shotgun!

2pm - 8pm sounds horrid from a patient point of view to me. I wanted, and needed, dh or m parents around at those times. Mind, they were all quiet, calm and kept to my area.

I agree that disruptive visitors should be dealt with, and young child visitors should be restricted massively.

Sorry but at LEAST they have people who want to visit them!

Honestly I was horrified at the care my grandmother received in hospital. No one was refilling water jugs so she had no water from 12am till 11.30am when I went in. I ended up filling water jugs for the whole ward and helping another lady to the toilet as she had been pressing the bell for an hour.

I think the problem is hospitals are stretched to breaking point and a lot of visitors stay because they want to take care of their relatives. What needs to happen though is a control on numbers and noise, but again, if there is no one there or willing to confront loud people then you're stuck

When my father was last in, they were very strict and I was grateful. They let me stay with him the night we thought he might be dying, but I was very, very quiet and sat with the curtain around us.

THe next time he was admitted, I went to get him some ice lollies as he wasn't eating. I dashed out to buy them but got back to the ward ten minutes into the protected lunch time when visitors aren't allowed. I was quizzed by a doctor but when I explained about the ice lollies and that I wasn't going to stay, just hand them over to the one of the lovely auxiliaries, he was fine about it.

I'm glad they are sticklers in this ward. It meant that the crazy, loud wife of the patient in the next bed was eventually prohibited from over-staying at night when everyone needed to sleep.

they are letting you home with an ng tube?

Nurses are too fearful to enforce

Maybe I'm being dense, but I'm unclear on why the nurses should be expexted to enforce this

Surely they'd ask noisy visitors to quieten down and ask them to leave if they don't (both while passing through the ward for other things) ... and then call security if that doesn't work?

When FIL needed kill-or-cure surgery last year, DH and MIL were on standby to see him as soon as he was brought to the ward. Which was about 10.30pm, and they stayed about an hour until it was clear he was going to live, and what care he was going to need after that.

I think hospitals need to be more explicit that they don't have the care staff there should be (what people think of as nurses but actually called care assistants now, as nurses can only do the more medicalised aspects of care as there's not enough of them either), and that families and friends should expect to provide care in hospitals.

When I was growing up I read that in third world countries patients didn't get food or care unless families provided it, and sadly the NHS is getting bloody close to that.

there would be lots of dead patients if there werent these flexi visiting hours.and for those quiet and polite families i priase them for pushing to see their relatives and be there.

I think there is a difference between visitors and those providing care.

but for other patients on the ward, the carer is just another visitor.

I don't disagree family is needed, and I don't blame nurses ,I blame the idiotic morons who designed communal wards in the first place. It's 2019 FFS! Can't we start thinking about the care of the patients in this country?

We celebrate men on the moon, but patients are still treated as they were in Medieval England, how is that right?

Unless they are the patients, obviously, children should be banned from hospitals.

That’s completely shocking, kateandme . When did it all go to shit? When the hospitals started to be run by management instead of medical professionals? Or when the funding was cut?

@DarlingNikita Interpretive dance. Yes. It is truly the answer to everything. And no, I am not joking. :)

Thankfully it was a couple of hours in the evening when my parents were in. I would have felt obliged to hang around for ever if it was all day visiting- wed said all the news in the first 10 mins.

Puzzled - the nurses are running around dealing with alarms and generally stopping people dying. They can and do have a quiet word but there's not many security staff for a whole hospital and most of them are needed in A&E.

Had a delightful family next to dd when she broke a bone and needed surgery, thinking that playing horror movies out loud was OK because 'the earphones broke'. At 11pm on a children's ward. Their kid was inoffensive enough. Eventually I decided I could be more scary than them, aided by a heavy metal band nightshirt and my best well-hard accent , and made some dire threats. They shut it, but I shouldn't have had to go that far - I was relying on being able to look nice middle-class and disabled woman, should they have made any complaints about me...

Sicario

I really disliked this about being in hospital; it was much more restful on the wards that actively told visitors to go home at 9pm as then at least the rest of us got some sleep

One benefit of being in a ward is that staff can see you more easily if you become unwell. As a junior doctor we were sometimes called to cardiac arrests/ emergency calls when an elderly patient hadn't been seen by anyone for hours (even those on 'hourly observation'....) as staff were too busy to keep popping in. So in some cases a side room can be dangerous if you are at risk of deteriorating.

Saying that I agree that noisy wards can be a nightmare for getting any peace and rest. Having enforced visiting hours for patients that don't need care from family/ exceptional circumstances is really important.

I would also like to see staff empowered to deal with visitors who make too much noise/ are disruptive/ stay too long. I think staff can be wary of confrontation as sadly unreasonable and aggressive people are too common.

Mind your own buisness @MarieVanGoethem you have no idea if these visitors had rang to ask in advance about visiting. There is always one busybody and in this instance its you.

Yabnu. The only time I have stayed asa visitor outside of the ward times was when my grandfather was dying and my husbands nan was waiting for transfer to a hospice as she had hours/days left. We were very quiet and courteous with the curtains around us.

Eh??

What annoys me more is on the children's ward when the kids play music and iPads in the small hours with their parents when the ward is dark and my child is trying to sleep.

WomanLikeMeLM

If said visitors were polite and considerate, the OP would be more than delighted to mind her own business, it's these horrible people who are disturbing PATIENTS who should be given a chance to recover!

Are you one of these rude people?

I spent a lot of time on a general ward and it
Wasn’t too bad. Most visitors were fine,
And the other guests were all lovely (my mum was horrified that I was on a mixed sex ward... I had considered raising this, but the 80 something year old man was not a threat to me so I just left it). On another ward one (ladies only) one of the other patients told me the “rules”: visitors to 8pm. Lights off at 9pm. That ward was great, the other ladies were lovely (I was the youngest by far)

But the maternity ward was hellish. Lots of visitors, no privacy, nurses leaving curtains open when I was not fully dressed (no one needs to see my nipples), lights on 24/7, girl in next bed on FaceTime with through the night (I could hear the tv in her boyfriends house: he wasn’t even the father)

Another nurse bashing thread. YIPPEEE.

threemagnums, those awkward bloody nurses trying to open your curtains every ten minutes aren’t doing it to abuse your privacy, they are doing it so that they can make sure that you are safe. They have a duty of care to you and as such it is helpful if are not hidden behind a barrier.