Reductions proposed in hospital visiting hours (From Western Telegraph)

Reductions proposed in hospital visiting hours

Open hospital visiting is too open, and can be bad for patients, a health watchdog heard recently.

Withybush Hospital is mooting plans to restrict visiting hours to enhance patient care, members of Pembrokeshire Community Health Council (CHC) were told during their July meeting.

As the champion of the publics interest in health care, the hospital was consulting with the CHC over the proposed changes.

According to the hospital, ward sisters are concerned that four and five hours of open visiting time in the afternoons through to the evening makes it very difficult to provide a dignified care environment for patients.

Mrs Chris Hayes, nursing director (Acute Division), Pembrokeshire and Derwen NHS Trust, explained to CHC members that during the four or five days that on average patients can be in hospital, they may be quite poorly and require a lot of medical attention. Therapies need to be administered in a calm, dignified and private environment. The senior sisters, aware that patients and their families valued the flexibility of the current liberal visiting hours, devised a compromise proposal that reduces and standardises the routine access to general adult wards to 3 pm to 4 pm and 7 pm to 8 pm.

Pembrokeshire CHC members were concerned that the new hours should not be a straitjacket.

The hospital pledged it would be sensitive to the needs of exceptional cases. Mrs Hayes took up the CHCs suggestion that an extra half-hours visiting be added to the proposed hour in the evening, saying she would refer it back to the working group, which drafted the proposals.

Although CHC members have some reservations about the changes, they did not object to the proposed reform of visiting hours.

The new arrangements will be monitored, with patients, visitors, and staff being asked their views once the new system is up and running.