Hospital visitation restrictions hurt patients and nurses

In an op-ed in Medpage Today, Karen Cox, PhD, RN, and Tejal K. Gandhi, MD, MPH, called patient visitation “a silent safety net,” which improves patient outcomes and reduces the burden of care on nurses. Pandemic-era policies limiting hospital visitation can have unintended safety consequences, they wrote, including increased potential for missed care, falls and delayed recognition of deterioration. The policies can also exacerbate inequalities because not all families can connect with their loved ones virtually. With better access to personal protective equipment and knowledge of how to mitigate COVID-19 than at the beginning of the pandemic, they urged hospitals and health care systems to improve the quality of care and reduce the strain on nurses by rethinking policies that limit visitation. (Medpage Today article, 9/2/21)