Hospital visitors' experiences at the nurses' station

Area of Science:

• Healthcare experiences
• Sociology of health
• Patient and visitor studies

Background:

• Hospital visiting practices significantly impact patient and visitor experiences.
• Visitors may experience 'liminality,' a state of transition between social structures.
• Understanding these experiences is vital for informing policy and professional practice.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the experiences of individuals visiting hospitalized friends and family in English NHS hospitals.
• To enhance knowledge of hospital visiting dynamics and inform future healthcare policy.
• To explore the concept of liminality in the context of hospital visitation.

Main Methods:

• A qualitative study involving 17 semi-structured interviews with hospital visitors (2011-2013).
• Thematic analysis of transcribed interviews.
• Application of liminality as a theoretical and analytical framework.

Main Results:

• Visitors described their role as a suspension of everyday life, with liminality being a consistent theme.
• Key themes of liminality included obedience, loss of status, ambiguity, uncertainty, and structure/communitas.
• A discrepancy was found between nurses' perception of the nurses' station as 'back stage' and visitors' perception of it as 'front stage'.

Conclusions:

• Visitors experiencing nurses' 'back-stage' behavior at the nurses' station report increased marginalization, exclusion, and mistrust.
• This can lead to perceptions of unprofessionalism and a higher likelihood of complaints.
• Increased awareness of visitor perceptions may reduce complaints and allow NHS resources to better focus on patient care.