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Visitors not Welcome: Hospital Visitation Restrictions and Institutional Betrayal

Healthcare organizations’ continued restrictions on hospital visitation during the COVID-19 pandemic can be considered a violation of the rights of hospitalized patients to receive family visitors. Despite expert opinion related to the safety of visitation and low risk of visitor transmission with a...

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Autores principales: Marmo, Suzanne, Hirsch, Jennifer
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer International Publishing 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9465650/
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s42972-022-00063-4
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author Marmo, Suzanne
Hirsch, Jennifer
author_facet Marmo, Suzanne
Hirsch, Jennifer
author_sort Marmo, Suzanne
collection PubMed
description Healthcare organizations’ continued restrictions on hospital visitation during the COVID-19 pandemic can be considered a violation of the rights of hospitalized patients to receive family visitors. Despite expert opinion related to the safety of visitation and low risk of visitor transmission with appropriate monitoring and precautions, hospital visitation restrictions have continued beyond the initial crisis phase of the pandemic, with little transparency or inclusion of key stakeholders in the decision-making process. Particularly on critical care units, blocking access to family visitors can contribute to additional harm and trauma for care-dependent hospitalized patients and their families. Utilizing an institutional betrayal framework, the aim of this commentary on hospital ICU visitation policy is to provide a discussion of how hospitals who serve a care-dependent population have placed critically ill patients, families, and healthcare workers at risk for complex trauma. Hospital social workers should incorporate an integrated social work approach to advocacy efforts which address not only individual hospitalized patient service needs, but also the uneven power differential that can contribute to inequity in visitation, medical mistrust, and long-term community trauma. On the interprofessional ICU team, social workers can function as trauma informed systems experts, coordinating and facilitating supports to help patients and families cope with hospitalization, while also advocating within their institution and with elected officials for policy change to protect patient and family–centered visitation rights.
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spelling pubmed-94656502022-09-12 Visitors not Welcome: Hospital Visitation Restrictions and Institutional Betrayal Marmo, Suzanne Hirsch, Jennifer J of Pol Practice & Research Conceptual Paper Healthcare organizations’ continued restrictions on hospital visitation during the COVID-19 pandemic can be considered a violation of the rights of hospitalized patients to receive family visitors. Despite expert opinion related to the safety of visitation and low risk of visitor transmission with appropriate monitoring and precautions, hospital visitation restrictions have continued beyond the initial crisis phase of the pandemic, with little transparency or inclusion of key stakeholders in the decision-making process. Particularly on critical care units, blocking access to family visitors can contribute to additional harm and trauma for care-dependent hospitalized patients and their families. Utilizing an institutional betrayal framework, the aim of this commentary on hospital ICU visitation policy is to provide a discussion of how hospitals who serve a care-dependent population have placed critically ill patients, families, and healthcare workers at risk for complex trauma. Hospital social workers should incorporate an integrated social work approach to advocacy efforts which address not only individual hospitalized patient service needs, but also the uneven power differential that can contribute to inequity in visitation, medical mistrust, and long-term community trauma. On the interprofessional ICU team, social workers can function as trauma informed systems experts, coordinating and facilitating supports to help patients and families cope with hospitalization, while also advocating within their institution and with elected officials for policy change to protect patient and family–centered visitation rights. Springer International Publishing 2022-09-12 2023 /pmc/articles/PMC9465650/ http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s42972-022-00063-4 Text en © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022, Springer Nature or its licensor holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law. This article is made available via the PMC Open Access Subset for unrestricted research re-use and secondary analysis in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for the duration of the World Health Organization (WHO) declaration of COVID-19 as a global pandemic.
spellingShingle Conceptual Paper
Marmo, Suzanne
Hirsch, Jennifer
Visitors not Welcome: Hospital Visitation Restrictions and Institutional Betrayal
title Visitors not Welcome: Hospital Visitation Restrictions and Institutional Betrayal
title_full Visitors not Welcome: Hospital Visitation Restrictions and Institutional Betrayal
title_fullStr Visitors not Welcome: Hospital Visitation Restrictions and Institutional Betrayal
title_full_unstemmed Visitors not Welcome: Hospital Visitation Restrictions and Institutional Betrayal
title_short Visitors not Welcome: Hospital Visitation Restrictions and Institutional Betrayal
title_sort visitors not welcome: hospital visitation restrictions and institutional betrayal
topic Conceptual Paper
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9465650/
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s42972-022-00063-4
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