HOSPITAL VISITORS

Dominion, Volume 35, Issue 7, 3 October 1941, Page 9

HOSPITAL VISITORS

How Johannesburg Met The Problem TWO CARDS A PATIENT The visitor question at the Wellington Hospital'has been the subject of discussion recently by the Wellington Hospital Board. A board member, Mrs. Knox Gilmer, has received from South Africa an account of how it has been overcome in the Johannes,burg General Hospital, where an overage of 3000 persons were visiting patients every afternoon of the week and providing the hospital authorities with a thorny problem. This account stated that groups of six and even up to 10 visitors would cluster round a bedside, while nearby were other patients who might be dangerously ill and in no state to be disturbed by noise. Johannesburg solved the problem by introducing recently this regulation: "The sister in charge of each ward shall control the number of visitors In the wards during visiting hours. She shall not allow more than two visitors to be with any patient at any one time during these hours. If other visitors are waiting, the sister shall acquaint the patient of the fact and arrange that they are not kept waiting.” In pursuance of this regulation, each patient in a Johannesburg Hospital public ward is now entitled to two cards, which, being readily transferable, can be passed round relatives and friends. The regulation will be waived only in cases where relatives are urgently required at a patient’s bedside. The Johannesburg Hospital authorities stated that while some patients might be well enough to receive many visitors, it was necessary to consider others who might be in a condition where <they would be unsettled !by untoward noise and activity nearby. There was also the factor that patients well on the way to recovery could be unsettled by over-excitement during visiting hours. Johannesburg doctors welcomed the decision. They stated that they had often noticed the exhausting effects on patients of large parties of visitors, apart from' the irritating and upsetting effect on patients who required rest and quiet. The cheerlng-up of patients by visitors often had a good psychological effect, but strict control bf numbers was necessary in the interests of the patients themselves.