Khaleghparast, S., Joolaee, S., Ghanbari, B., Maleki, M., Peyrovi, H., & Bahrani, N. (2015).

review of visiting policies in intensive care units. Global Journal of Health Science, 8(6),

267-276. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4954899/

The article contains a study that an Iran research group completed to investigate the strategies,

potential challenges, and the different dimensions of visiting hour policies in intensive care units

by reviewing a total of 42 published articles. They found a variety of opinions on open visitation

policies. The articles that supported open visitation, found that having a flexible and open

visiting policy had a positive effect on the patient’s condition, family was able to help them cope

with their crisis, and there was increased communication and overall satisfaction. Other articles

showed that open visiting hours can cause major concerns for nurses and doctors, as they

believed that open visitation can increase the patient’s physiological stress, interfere with nursing

care, increase the possibility of infection, and can lead to physical and emotional exhaustion of

the families. The authors all seemed to be very qualified to conduct their research as they all

work for either a research center or hospital. I believe the authors are credible as they have

published several other articles throughout their career. The article seemed to be a practical, non-

biased and useful resource that I plan to use in my research project.