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Beliefs and attitudes of intensive care nurses toward visits and open visiting policy

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Abstract

Objective

To describe the beliefs and attitudes of intensive care unit (ICU) nurses toward visiting, visiting hours, and open visiting policies in critical care settings.

Design

A descriptive, cross-sectional, multicenter survey.

Setting

Seventeen hospitals in Flanders (Dutch-speaking Belgium), including 30 ICUs. Sixteen mixed adult medical/surgical ICUs, three medical ICUs, five surgical ICUs, three coronary care units, two post-cardiac surgery ICUs, and one burn unit.

Participants

A total of 531 intensive care nurses.

Measurements and results

We devised a questionnaire comprising 20 items assessing beliefs and 14 items assessing attitudes. Nurses indicated their level of agreement for each statement on a five-point rating scale. Nurses believed that open visiting hampers planning of adequate nursing care (75.2%), interferes with direct nursing care (73.8%), and causes nurses to spend more time in providing information to the patients' families (82.3%). The presumed effects of visits on the patients and families were contradictory. Most nurses (75.3%) did not want to liberalize the visiting policy of their unit.

Conclusions

ICU nurses have rather skeptical beliefs and attitudes toward visiting and open visiting policy. This suggests that the culture at Flemish ICUs is not ready for a drastic liberalization of the visiting policy.

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Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully thank the participating hospitals for their collaboration in this survey, the head nurses and managers for facilitating this project, and the ICU nurses for filling out the questionnaires.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Health Services and Nursing Research, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Kapucijnenvoer 35/4, 3000, Leuven, Belgium

    Dana Berti & Philip Moons

  2. Department of Intensive Care Medicine, University Hospitals Leuven, Herestraat 49, 3000, Leuven, Belgium

    Patrick Ferdinande

  3. Department of Cardiology, University Hospitals Leuven, Herestraat 49, 3000, Leuven, Belgium

    Philip Moons

Authors
  1. Dana Berti
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  2. Patrick Ferdinande
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  3. Philip Moons
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Philip Moons.

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Berti, D., Ferdinande, P. & Moons, P. Beliefs and attitudes of intensive care nurses toward visits and open visiting policy. Intensive Care Med 33, 1060–1065 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00134-007-0599-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00134-007-0599-x

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