Visitor restrictions in place at area hospitals as respiratory illnesses spread
Nearly all of the Miami Valley’s hospitals have visitor restrictions in place due to all of the sicknesses going around.
29 hospitals are limiting the number of people who can visit loved ones over the holidays.
The last time hospitals did a traditional visitation restriction was before COVID.
News Center 7′s Taylor Robertson spoke with a woman whose sister had to give birth to her child without any family in the room, including her husband in 2020 during the COVID surge.
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Haily Davis feels restrictions like this are especially hard on patients who will spend Christmas inside a hospital room.
“I mean, if I put myself in the shoes of the person in the hospital, I feel like that’s extremely isolating,” Davis said.
Davis said her sister and brother-in-law really struggled with the fact that he could not be with her during the delivery.
“I feel like that was such a significant loss for them,” Davis said.
On the other hand, she understands the concern of spreading sicknesses such as COVID-19, RSV, and the flu to patients or staff inside of the hospital.
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This is the trio that the president of the Greater Dayton Area Hospital Association, Sarah Hackenbracht, said is hitting hospitals hard.
“We’ve started to move up in terms of from low to medium to high influenza-like symptoms across the region, and we’re seeing overall increase in respiratory illnesses,” Hackenbracht said. “It’s all of those things happening simultaneously that are impacting our hospital capacity.”
She said it’s most important to keep hospital staff healthy so they can show up to treat patients who need them.
“They’re also members of our community, they also have families and so there are also times where they might need to be the caregiver at home to take care of a young one with RSV or to take care of an elderly or aging parent who needs direct care and hands-on care in the home,” Hackenbracht said.
The restrictions prevent anyone who has symptoms such as a cough…fever or sneezing..or anyone 14 years old and younger from visiting people in the hospital.
“We do this because it really allows us to ensure that we can protect the community that we are there to provide care for and then ensure that our workforce is healthy and able to be in our hospitals to be at the bedside when we need them,” Hackenbracht said.
Hackenbracht said they do understand this is a really hard time to not be able to see your family members or friends inside the hospital around the holidays but the safety of their patients and staff is what’s at the top of their priority list.
