First, let me start with our guidelines at work. Our visiting guidelines state a person may have 3-4 people in the delivery room at a time and visiting hours are 11am to 8pm.
I know that you cannot set a time frame on when babies are born, so, we are VERY lenient on our visiting hours. We do request that people trade time in the delivery room if >4 people so that: 1.the patient has room to move, 2.if an emergency was to happen the staff would be able to move around quickly without having to ask a lot of people to move and 3.the patient can focus more with less people talking in the room(at least for most people). (We normally let as many can fit in the room AFTER the delivery and everything is o.k.).
Also we cannot allow people to wait in the hallways outside the rooms because:1.Other patients on the unit and confidentiality reasons, 2.Hospital policy, 3.Hallways become too crowded to either move other patients around or to get somewhere quickly(remember we have 2-3 lives in our hands at work and our main priority are them).
Tonight at work we had a patient that had 6-8 people waiting in the hallway outside the room. They were asked to wait either in the patient room or the visiting lounge by three different people(Yes, they were asked politely) About an hour later, I was moving a patient to another area and the same group was waiting outside the doors and I had to go through their group to take my patient to another room. In the process I requested that they wait down in the waiting room and reassured them that we would send someone down after the person they were waiting for delivered. Needless to say a couple of them had some snide comments to make(in front of this family I was moving - very inappropriate). After two more people asked them to move and twenty minutes later(still not moved), we called Security to come and talk to them(Remember, we have to keep our patients safety first). Needless to say the group was upset that they had to wait in the visitor lounge(the patient did not want anyone else in the room until they were delivered).
I guess I was frustrated because:1.My patient was embarrassed that she had to go through this group 2.They were asked multiple times to wait elsewhere and made snide comments 3.What if some emergency happened and they were in the way? and 4.If the patient did not want others in her room then either these people needed to respect our policy and her wishes or wait at home until they called after the deliver.
So, how could this have been handled better and any input(I may come back with more of the story after comments posted)
2 comments:
One thing I learned real quick was that if you are too nice to people, they will try to walk all over you. They teach us in po-po land that you ask nicely one time, explain the reasons to them why you are asking them to do it, and tell them what will happen if they do not cooperate with your request. If they still decide to ignore your request, you do what you said you were going to do. That's that.
I think calling security was the right thing to do, and if that doesn't work you should get the po-po involved. I've gone to the hospital several times to "motivate" people to comply with the hospital staff. Hospitals don't have to allow visitors -they chose to. And if a non-patient is staying on the property after being asked to leave they are tresspassing and can be charged with a crime. Once this is explained to a person they will usually cooperate with the hospital.
Im with macdaddy, I've worked in 3 different hospitals and although I totally understand family and friends concerns and reasons for wanting to be close to a situation, (I've been on the family end of a hospital situation many times) if they really love the person who is the patient they should respect the rules. Every rule is for a reason and has the patients best interest in mind. I am just shocked at how many adults now adays think they dont have to obey rules. Call security, call the po-po, but you have to do what you have to do!
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