New rules would restrict visiting hours at hospitals

Infection control: The Health Service Executive (HSE) is to recommend to hospitals that visitors should only be allowed in to see patients for two hours in the afternoon and two hours in the evening.

New draft policy guidelines, which are expected to be issued by the HSE in the coming weeks, will also propose that in future only up to three visitors should be permitted to see a patient at any one time.

The draft guidelines suggest that visiting hours should be restricted from 2pm to 4pm in the afternoon and from 6.30pm to 8.30pm in the evening.

Under the guidelines, children would only be admitted as visitors if the patient concerned was their mother or father. Visitors would also be asked not to go to hospital wards if they had any infectious symptoms or signs.

In maternity hospitals, fathers would be allowed to visit freely. However, the restrictions on visiting times and numbers would apply to everyone else. In children's wards, parents would have free access. However, the restrictions would again apply to all others. The restrictions form part of a move by health service management to improve infection prevention in hospitals.

A spokesman for the HSE said yesterday it appeared there was no consistent policy across the health service on visiting hours and the practice was very fluid.

The Tánaiste and Minister for Health Mary Harney has, in recent weeks, publicly called for such restrictions to be put in place by hospitals.

Ms Harney said last month that it "was not desirable or good for patients to have people visiting from very early in the morning to 11pm at night".

She also called on health service management to introduce restrictions on visitors bringing hot food into hospitals.

Ms Harney said she had witnessed visitors sitting around a bed in a hospital eating a Big Mac and chips.

Separately, in a strong letter about MRSA sent to HSE chief executive Prof Brendan Drumm several weeks ago, Ms Harney also urged he consider a policy of "tighter management of visiting times and of numbers" to see if this had a role to play in infection prevention.

Ms Harney also warned the HSE management that doctors had a legal and ethical obligation to inform patients who had contracted MRSA in hospitals.

She also said that where MRSA was a primary or contributory cause of the death of a patient that this should be set out in the official death certificate.

Ms Harney's frank letter to Prof Drumm followed a series of meetings before Christmas with patients and families who had been affected by the MRSA problem in hospitals.

"A common thread through all their stories was that neither they nor their relatives were informed in clear and unambiguous terms that they were infected with MRSA and what the implications were, both for them and their families. I have heard other anecdotes to this effect also. This is not acceptable and hospital staff need to be clearly reminded of the requirement to discharge their existing legal and ethical responsibilities in this regard," she said.

Ms Harney also said that the issue of the accuracy of death certificates had been raised with her by families affected by MRSA.

"I understand that the certification of the cause of death can be sometimes problematic but it seems to me, where it is clear that the existence of an infection is either the primary or contributory cause of death, this should be recorded in the appropriate section on the death certificate," she stated.

Ms Harney said the procedures to inform GPs and nursing homes that their patients have been diagnosed with MRSA while in hospital "appears not to be as effective as it should be".