ALKHOBAR: Patient visitations play an important role in the healing process, provided the well-wishers adopt the right approach by speaking and acting in a manner that the sick person’s morale is lifted.

However, any wrong move by the visitor may affect the patient’s health in a negative way. It is commonsense that the visitor should avoid talking about negative experiences, asking the patient about the disease rather than health, accusing him/her of negligence and bringing wrong gifts.

Mashan Al-Dossari, a 19-year-old hospitalized patient, said: “I feel happy and comfortable when my relatives and friends come to visit me.” He was injured in a road accident on the first day of Ramadan, and stressed the importance of fastening the seatbelt while driving to avoid serious injuries.

Muhammad Abdul Rahman, another patient, said: “Some visitors spend too much time without realizing that patient may be getting tired. Talking about negative experiences or bringing inappropriate gift like sweets and chocolates might be harmful to the patient or incompatible with the prescribed medicines.”

He said that some people get children along with them while visiting patients which is not good for the kids as well as the patient. “Hospital visits should be brief and include good and positive phrases that raise the spirit of the patient; the visitor should ask about the health of the patient and not the disease itself.”

Umm Essam said that some hospital visitors talk about the difficulty of treatment, which would affect the morale of the patient, adding that visits should be brief and positive to avoid inconvenience to patients.