It's a staple of Hollywood hospital scenes: An ornery nurse tells distraught family members that they must leave the bedside of their loved one.
A new study suggests that such interactions should be kept to a minimum, for the benefit of both patients and their families.
"Elimination of even minimal restrictions on visitation hours improved family satisfaction and improved nurses' perceptions of family satisfaction with the visitation policy," wrote researchers in a report published Monday in the American Journal of Critical Care.
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That was based on a small survey, which compared the satisfaction of 50 families visiting relatives in an ICU unit with strict visitation policies with 53 families that visited relatives after those restrictions had been lifted.
The previous policy restricted visitation to two 90-minute periods–one in the morning and one in the evening. After the policy was lifted, visitation was generally unrestricted.
The survey also examined the perceptions of nurses attending to the families as well as the nurses' own feelings of the families' increased presence.
The results showed that nurses were much more likely to perceive the families as being satisfied because of the policy change.
In addition, nurses did not report significantly more interference as a result of the change.
Other studies have come to similar conclusions in recent years and federal guidelines have changed in recent years to require hospitals to give patients greater discretion in picking their visitors.
President Obama directed the Department of Health and Human Services in 2010 to make rules to ensure that hospitals participating in Medicaid and Medicare allow patients to designate visitors, regardless of relationship.
The directive was largely in response to complaints about hospitals not allowing non-spouse partners to visit their loved ones.
"Numerous studies have shown that more liberal visitation policies lead to improved family, patient and nurse satisfaction without representing a safety risk," Dr. Samuel Brown, one of the study authors, said in a news release. "In fact, studies have suggested that patients do better medically when their families are free to accompany them during their ICU stay."
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