Studying the Obstacles to Establishing a System of Free Visiting in the ICU of Subordinating Educational Hospitals of Iranian Medical Sciences University

Visiting in ICU have always been quite restricted and limited. This restriction and separation from family on one side and encountering an unknown environment and fear of the unknown increases the fear on the other side. It will turn into a crisis for the patient and his family and causes severe concern and turmoil for them. However, there is no reason to restrict visitings in the ICU nowadays and the effectiveness of such visitings has become quite clear. The majority of therapeutic institutes still have a restricted visiting system. The present research seeks to study the obstacles to establishing a free visiting system according to health service providers from four aspects of attitude, knowledge, physical obstacles and cultural obstacles. This is a qualitative and descriptive research with three groups of participants including nurses, doctors and managers working in the subordinating hospitals of Iranian Medical Sciences University. Cluster sampling method was used for hospitals and simple random sampling was used in the ICU of hospitals while convenient sampling method was used for doctors and nurses in each unit. The last group included all the managers of that hospital. Each group answered a questionnaire with 40 questions designed in Likert scale whose validity and credibility was quite clear. Then, the resulting information was analyzed using SPSS16.0/win. the total number of participants from 21 hospitals and 86 units was 1008 people. The average age of the participants was 35 years old and some 66.7 % of them were female. The average working period in ICU was 60.47 months. Shortage of space and lack of separate beds were among the most important physical obstacles while unawareness of the procedure of disease and failing to control the emotions were among the most important cultural obstacles. Considering the negative attitude of the personnel and their limited awareness of the advantages of free visitings, training them and increasing their awareness of the advantages of free visitings are the most important strategies to change their attitude and make them accept this innovation. Considering the negative attitude of therapeutic personnel and their limited awareness of the advantages of free visitings, training them and enhancing their awareness of the advantages of free visitings are the most important strategies which can be utilized to change their attitude and make them accept innovations.