The Personal Social Factors of Nurses Beliefs about Open Visiting in ICU of Sina- Tabriz Hospital: Based on Reasoned - Action Theory of Ajzen - Fishbein

Abstract

Background and Objectives: Admission to an intensive care unit is recognized as an extremely stressful experience for both patients and their families. Also the responses of nurses to visitors in ICU unit are different. Because of the problems that visitors cause for patients and unit managing they limit visits. At present, family visiting policy at intensive care units contains more limitations. The aim of this study was to analyze the effect of open ICU visiting on nurses and family's beliefs about nursing care. Materials and Methods: A semi-experimental study was designed. Because of the opposition to changing visiting policy at wide level, sample was contained 14 employed nurses at intensive care unit from Sina hospital in Tabriz, from 2007 to 2008, which each completed one researcher-structured questionnaire. Questionnaire was developed by using likert scale with 28 questions about personal and social factors of nurses' beliefs about changing visiting policy from restricted to open and its validity and reliability was calculated. Results: Results showed that before changing in visiting policy nurses' beliefs was negative (78/6). Based on maximum score= 4 mean of scores was 76.71±6.31 and after open visiting was 79.64±5.94. Difference between scores distribution of nurses' beliefs before and after changing visiting policy was meaningful by using Wilcoxon test (P= 0.038). And correlation between nurses' beliefs and social factors was not meaningful (r= 0.053, P= 0.85). Conclusion: According to study findings, predominant factors in nurse's beliefs were social factors, specially: colleague's believes, supervisors roles, unit managers and policies.