Restricted Visiting Hours in ICUs

Visitor Behaviors Can Influence the Risk of Patient Harm: An Analysis of Patient Safety Reports From 92 Hospitals

“…Consistent with previous studies, [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16] our results revealed that visitor behavior was frequently associated with a decreased risk of patient harm. For example, we found that visitor communication with staff was most frequently reported as decreasing risk of harm and was distributed across all seven event types.…”

New visiting policy: A step toward nursing ethics

“…Berwick and Kotagal (2004) showed that open visiting hours gain the trust of the families. 16 This contradicts the results of this study where the families participating in the study believed that they trust nurses in ICU regardless of restrictive visiting hours. It seems that this difference in opinions may be due to geographical environment and location of the hospital and governing socio-cultural differences.…”

Variation in Hospital Visiting Hour Policies in US Acute Care Facilities: An Exploratory Cross-Sectional Analysis

“…Despite evidence that flexible visitation improves communication and satisfaction, reduces anxiety and delirium, and does not meaningfully increase security incidents or compromise infection control (1,4,5,10,37,38), visiting windows varied widely in our sample. The heterogeneity suggests hospitals balance competing priorities, including patient experience, impact on staff, and operational efficiency, rather than converging on a single optimal policy.…”