Septic measures, and cleanliness, also vaccines have a lot to do with it. Children used to be vectors of all sorts of things-- the last thing you wanted to do was introduce chickenpox to your maternity unit. A vaccine was invented, and now there is no rule that you have to be over 10 to visit maternity, and toddlers can visit new siblings. But private rooms with air filters that prevent air from circulating from room to room, and a bathroom per room plus a hand sanitizer dispenser per room and warnings to visitors to wash hands before touching patients, and to use the hand sanitizer if you cough or blow your nose are taken very seriously by visitors. So you don’t have to have strict visiting hours before and after which there is a scrubbing down of the unit.
When I was a candy-striper in the 80s, rules had been greatly relaxed from when I was a sibling in the 70s. Siblings could view new siblings through the window of the nursery, and visit their mothers, hugging and kissing them.
Now, siblings who are vaccinated up to their age appropriateness (probably anti-vaxxers have home births), at least in the hospital where my son was born, can visit mom and new sib to their heart’s content. Any visitor the mom wishes can hold the baby as long as hands are washed.
That’s maternity. I assume that things are even more relaxed everywhere else except ICU and CCU, where there are a lot of tube breathers who are very vulnerable to lung infections.
When my mom was dying, not only could we stay in the room, but they had a built-in bed they made up for me. (She was in the oncology area.) There were at most three or four people in the room besides her.
When my brother was in the cardiac ICU, they woudl let one person see him for 15 minutes every two hours. Loved ones would gather around the door on the hour till it clicked a green light and would open for you.
I’ve been in the psychiatric ward a few times. Visiting hours there were highly restricted, even as a voluntary unit. I’ve also been admitted to the hospital for non-psychiatric reasons, and visiting hours were much more relaxed to the point that they weren’t discussed at all. But I had a friend visit me one of the former times and we were playing cards and not watching the time, and the staff never realized until almost an hour after visiting hours were over that the guy I was playing cards with wasn’t a patient, and they weren’t particularly happy he’d stuck around for so long.
Last time I was in the hospital, a couple years ago, they had posted visiting hours. Up to 9pm, I think. At that time, they turned the lights in the hallways down and everything quieted down. That often cued visitors to leave.
But they didn’t enforce them much. Once a nurse came by just after that and I had a visitor. She said “visiting hours are over – but if you’re quiet you can stay later”. Which triggered my visitor to start saying goodbye. I had to beg them to stay – I was bored out of my head in there.
That reminds me of when I was visiting someone on a psych ward, and we asked for a deck of cards. A nurse, or aide or someone found us a box with the dregs of several decks in it, and we managed to put a playable deck together. A little while later, we were playing gin, and the nurse stopped by, and said, and I swear I am not making this up, “Are you playing with a full deck?” He (the guy I was visiting) laughed so hard, I’m surprised they didn’t sedate him.
I was in the hospital this summer, and they are switching rooms from double occupancy to single occupancy.
Although they have posted visiting hours, they were no longer enforced, but I sure wish they were. People stopped by 24 hours a day to talk, watch TV, eat, and talk (loudly) some more. I would have loved just a couple of hours so I could sleep in peace, or sleep at all.
Yes, I could have called a nurse, but I knew it wouldn’t do well with any relationship I’d have with my roommate, and I wasn’t sure how long either of us were going to be in.
This has been my experience visiting relatives in hospital - as long as you’re not being a disruptive nuisance, you can stay past the visiting hours. Usually you’ll eventally be politely asked to leave to let the patients get some rest, though.
When my husband was in ICU, visiting hours were posted but no one told me I had to leave. In addition, my husband definitely exceeded the number of visitors allowed during his three day stay. At one time 8 visitors were in his room. Perhaps he got some leeway because his monitors showed no change or positive change when visitors were present and also most of his visitors were paramedics known to the hospital staff. My husband also did not sleep during the night and received several paramedics in the middle of the night who came by the hospital to drop off a patient and stopped by to see if he was awake. I think visiting hours are posted to allow the hospital to remove people they don’t want there, but can be ignored when no problems are encountered.
I’m telling you, when I was a candy-striper, I was on a general medical-surgical ward part of the time, in the mid 1980s, and visiting hours were pretty strictly enforced. The exception was the “Frills” room. It was a really nice, private room that looked like a 4-star hotel room, was bigger than the other rooms, and was the only room with a VCR. It had open visiting hours for people the patient put on a list. You paid a lot for it.
Anyway, after visiting hours, the nurses chased everyone out, and then the cleaning crew came through, and I changed all the cups in the rooms, and dumped everyone’s water pitcher and put in fresh water.
Now, everyone has a private room, and instead of cleaning the rooms obsessively, they make sure all the patients handwash. If someone is especially vulnerable to catching something, the visitors to wear a gown, or a mask, or both. The purpose of restricting visiting hours was always infection control, but infection control ideas have changed, as have ideas about the value of visitors to the patient’s overall health.
