THE Health and Wellness Ministry on Monday launched an extended visiting hours programme for parents at Bustamante Hospital for Children and won immediate praise from two mothers who were among the first four to register.

“I am excited. It is not easy leaving [after] the normal visiting hours. I have my son here; he is just two years old — my first child and my only child — so it is very difficult leaving him here and seeing him crying in the evenings. So, this is a great opportunity to spend more time with him and to stay within his normal sleeping schedule,” Francine Perry told the Jamaica Observer after the launch of the pilot on three wards.

“Now I can stay from 8:00 am to 10:00 pm… it is way better than before, and I just want to be here for him. He is my obligation. I brought him here so I have to take care of him,” she added.

Her joy was shared by Tasheka Anderson.

“When I first heard about the programme I felt very excited because I know it would help both the parents and the child in a supportive way, especially the longer visiting hours, especially if you are at work and after work ends you can be at the hospital for the child to support and assist,” Anderson said.

“Sometimes children get emotional when the parents are not around so I am honoured to be a part of it. The staff will work more effectively when the parent is around; they can assist with feeding and emotional support.” Anderson told the Observer.

“I didn’t think the original time was sufficient, because most times when I leave I still feel like I should have been there longer. Sometimes they are understaffed, they do not have the amount of nurses that should be there, so I think this is a very good move for both parents,” she said.

The Family Caregivers Pilot Programme allows parents, whose children are patients, a 14-hour visit. Up to four people are allowed under the programme which was fuelled by a father’s petition launched on January 31 last year.

The father, in an interview with the Observer last year, described the “dread” faced by parents at the end of visiting hours at the hospital, which was later attested to by scores of readers. He told the
Observer that parents were not able to attend to their children — ranging from newborn to 12 years — on the ward after visiting hours, thus forcing them to leave them at the hospital which is understaffed and has a low baby-to-nurse ratio in each ward.

His petition attracted well over the 15,000 signatures needed for it to be reviewed and responded to by the Office of the Prime Minister (OPM).

“This is something we have been advocating for, for a long time. And I will admit I am not the only one who has been advocating, because the biggest advocates have been the parents of young ones who have been here, including a petition on the OPM website, I believe a year and a half ago,” Health and Wellness Minister Dr Christopher Tufton said at the launch.

In explaining the introduction of the initiative Dr Marsha James — ear, nose and throat (ENT) consultant at the hospital — told the Observer that it serves as a more structured approach to what existed before the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Before COVID, there used to be a 24-hour visiting policy. It was a bit haphazard; there was no structure to it. Some patients felt that they were being treated unfairly. Sometimes the staff were under attack because there was no structure. During COVID, when we had to restrict visiting, they limited caregiver presence just to visiting time, so then a petition came because parents wanted to be more involved and to stay longer,” James explained.

“The Ministry of Health asked us to partner with them to introduce this programme to bring structure so that it would be more streamlined for both patients [and] parents as well as the staff, so they decided to pilot this programme here at Bustamante,” she added.

James highlighted that the pilot programme took effect Monday and will be operated for six months.

“We’re going to do monitoring and evaluation, look at the areas that we performed well and areas that we need to work on. And then, based on that, we hope to roll out quickly into the general hospital and to expand beyond Bustamante,” she said.

Adding that the programme allows designated family members or close friends to provide structure and non-clinical support to patients, James underscored that parents will have to register and be enrolled in the programme in order to benefit from the extended hours.

“So the caregivers who enrol in the programme will have that access; everyone else will just have regular visiting hours. You can’t just walk in and be a part of it because we’re allowing you to stay during clinical duties. You’ll always be on the ward so you have to conform to whatever ward rules exist, and so we need to ensure that you understand this before you’re allowed on the ward,” she explained.

Tufton said the extended visiting hours will assist with psychosocial support for children.

“The experience of isolation, not having their loved ones around them, the experience of being medicated, the experience of surgery, the experience of seeing others around them who are also not well and so you see the pain, the suffering, the trauma, it generates significant fear and indeed contributes to a slower healing process, because therapy starts with the mind,” he said.

Bustamante Hospital for Children is the only specialist paediatric hospital in the English-speaking Caribbean. It caters to the medical needs of children from zero to 12 years in Jamaica and neighbouring Caribbean countries.