Anne Arundel Medical Center Changes Visiting Hours Policy

Anne Arundel Medical Center patients now have the power to choose who they want to visit and when they can visit—24 hours a day, seven days a week.

The hospital officially changed its visiting-hours policy on Wednesday before a crowd of about 50 people.

Anita Smith, the manager of the Wound and Diabetes Unit at AAMC, explained the pineapple theme during the kickoff celebration.

“Pineapples are a sign of welcome," she said. "Back in the 1800s when the men in Charleston, SC, would sail off to the islands, their wives were not allowed to have visitors while they were gone. The men would bring back huge baskets of exotic fruit and stick the pineapple in the post on the fence as a sign they had returned and guests were now welcome to their home."

Signs decorated with pineapples and the words "Welcome Families" will replace the old signs displaying the former visiting-hour policy.

Rita Linnenkamp, a nurse at AAMC and a co-lead on the task force that changed the policy, said the new visiting-hour policy was discussed a year ago at a planning retreat.

“We were talking about patient- and family-centered care and we posed the question to the group of how we could move forward and be more patient- and family-centered," Linnenkamp said. "Forty-three percent of the respondents said we needed to open our visiting hours.”

She pointed out that the 43 percent were all staff members from AAMC and not patients or family members of patients. She said a task force was set up in September with two goals in mind.

One goal was to increase family presence and participation by opening visiting hours. And the second goal was to develop a process to use patient and family advisers. A patient and family adviser is a former patient or family member of a patient who is chosen through an application process to be part of a decision-making team at the hospital, Linnenkamp said.

The Revisiting Visiting Hours task force included five patient and family advisers.

What they came up with is simple.

“Basically, the premise is family is an intricate part of the health care team," Linnenkamp said. "Families are welcome 24/7 and the patient defines their family."

Sherry Perkins, vice president of Patient Care Services and a nurse at AAMC, said patients can now choose who their loved ones are and choose whenever they want them with to be with them.

“You can have the person you love be there when you want them to be and not when we think they should be,” Perkins said.

Katie Boston, the other co-lead on the task force, said other units at AAMC have already been using this open-door policy for a few months.

“The first official change was in the Women and Children’s Unit on Feb. 1," she said. "But we wanted to provide consistency across the board, across all departments so every patient can have the same experience all the time."

Boston said on the Women and Children’s Unit people would often have to lie or sneak other family members onto the unit to see a new baby because the policy in place only allowed siblings or other children over the age of 12.

“Now, you don’t have to lie to bring the people you love and need to your bedside,” she said.

The new policy lets the patient define who their family is, but it doesn’t mean a lapse in security. Quite the contrary, Boston said.

“Your family should be with you, they are part of the health care team,” she said. "But it’s not an open-door with no security. Patients don’t give up their rights as a result of this change. All the methods and measures we’ve put in place are still going to be there for safety."

Dick Davidson, the former president of American Hospital Association, spoke briefly about deregulating visiting hours at the new policy kickoff program. Davidson, of Annapolis, endowed a fund to advance patient and family care at AAMC.

“It’s a great day to celebrate," he said. "You are pioneers and you should be so proud. You are going to make life a lot better for patients and their families who come here for care."