"Nurses Perception of Open Visitation Policy at Intensive Care Units in Public and Private Jordanian Hospitals."

Abstract 

             Introduction: The Intensive Care Unit is extremely stressful environment for patients and their families. Survivors after hospital discharge generally report elevated levels of depression, nervousness, irritability and social isolation. Families of ICU patients experience a stressful event and often develop anxiety and depression. An unrestricted or open visiting policy is defined as a policy that imposes no restrictions on the time or duration of the visit. It is highly acknowledged that open visitation of critically ill patients by relatives may be useful.

             Purpose: The main purpose of this study was to evaluate nurses' perspective on the effects of open visiting hours on patients, families and nurses care.

Method: A descriptive comparative design was performed in the ICUs of five different hospitals; four private hospitals and one large governmental hospital in Amman-Jordan. All nurses from ICU department were invited to participate in the study. A convenient sample of 234 was responded on a structured questionnaire which was developed by Philip Moons in 2007 and tested for its validity and reliability from six experts. The Questionnaire contains 32 questions and is divided into 4 subscales. Scores are composed of five options starting from (1) strongly disagree to (5) strongly agree.

Results: A total of 250 participants received the questionnaire; 234 participants were included in the study. Responding rate was above 90%. From the total sample 59.4% were males and 40.6% were females. The mean of their age was 28.6 years with a mean of 4.1 years of experience. The overall mean score on this scale of the consequences of visitation on patient, family, and nursing care were (3.3, 3.2, and 3.4 respectively). Finally, the overall mean score on this scale of the nurses' attitudes towards visiting was (2.8).

           Conclusions: The ICU nurses in this study have agreed that open visitation policy is beneficial to the patient but they were not in favor of implementing an open visitation policy at their units. Regarding family, nurses believed that open visitation policy decreases families' anxiety. Regarding nurses attitudes, nurses believed that open visitation policy must be adopted when the patient is dying. Additionally, there was a significant difference for the effect of visitation on family and nurses attitudes toward visiting for the private and public hospitals with a small effect size.

Keywords: Nurses Perception; open visitation policy; ICU; Jordan.