Hospitals are being urged to relax rules on visiting hours and instead allow patients’ families round-the-clock access to wards in an attempt to help provide care for their loved ones.

The policy is being driven by John’s Campaign – a project set up in the wake of Dr John Gerrard’s death. He is said to have endured a “catastrophic stay in hospital” following a dementia diagnosis.

It aims to eliminate the confusion, isolation and deterioration dementia sufferers can experience when needing to have hospital treatment.

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The campaign has had notable success in England, where more than 700 hospitals are signed up to allow families to contribute to care: helping feed, change or toilet their relatives, while providing comfort, company and a familiar face.

However, only five of Scotland’s health boards have adopted the scheme so far and of those, most offer it on only a handful of wards.

Julia Jones, co-founder of John’s Campaign is baffled as to why take up in Scotland has been so low since the campaign was founded three years ago, “Maybe Scottish hospitals don’t like something that has come from England?” she says.

But it can also be hard to convince some staff to make the fundamental leap to working in partnership with carers.

“Every so often we run up against nurses who have been in the profession a long time who say ‘we just don’t do it that way’,” said Ms Jones. “Some nurses lack confidence and they think people will be watching them all the time. They think they are going to be criticised.”

However, the campaign is not about criticising NHS staff or substituting for nursing care.

“It isn’t about replacing them, we are offering something a  nurse can’t offer – that personal element of nurturing and wellbeing,” Ms Jones added.

Relatives and other regular carers can often spot changes in a patient before staff can, she says.

The precedent has already been set. “In the 1950s and 60s parents had to campaign to be allowed to be with their children in hospital,” Ms Jones said.

“It seems extraordinary, but in future it will seem equally extraordinary that someone with dementia could have been expected to cope without emotional support in hospital”.

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Experts agree that, despite the best intentions, hospitals are highly unsatisfactory environments for people with dementia and other cognitive conditions.

Noise and lights through the night and unfamiliar people and routines can increase the risk of serious conditions such as delirium and lengthen a patient’s need for treatment.

John’s Campaign has been most thoroughly adopted in NHS Lanarkshire where Gillian Corbett, chief of nursing services at Wishaw General Hospital, has championed the scheme.

Visiting on one elderly rehabilitation ward was increased from two hours daily to five, and then restrictions were removed altogether.

The hospital then became the first in the UK to sign its Accident and Emergency department up to John’s Campaign. Now 15 wards and community hospitals across NHS Lanarkshire encourage active family involvement.

“When patients have dementia, we say to families we would welcome you and value you as part of our team,” Ms Corbett explains.

She admits it was a leap of faith to begin with: “You can’t wait until everybody is on the same page, you just have to do it.

“A confident team of nurses should have nothing to fear from relatives being around.”

In the past, complaints often arose from families not being there.

Relatives will complain because a patient is not being fed the right way, or the right food, or says they haven’t been fed when in fact they have just forgotten. “So much of it is about communication,” says Hakim BenYounes , a surgeon and chief of medical services at Wishaw General.

“It is so helpful if you can make a connection with people through their family, treatments become more meaningful.

“What else is there you can do in the NHS that costs nothing and brings about a significant improvement in outcomes?”

Staff reaction was initially mixed, said senior charge nurse Karen Wilson, who first suggested adopting John’s Campaign at Wishaw .

“Some nurses were resistant, fearing relatives being there around the clock watching what everything they do, but when they saw it working, they can see the benefits to patients, families and staff,” she said.

Mark Tiffney, whose mother Anne has advanced Alzheimer’s disease was invited on to the ward when his mother was admitted and put on antibiotics to treat an infection.

He filled out a form detailing her likes and dislikes.

“It helps to motivate staff – they read it and get a full profile of my mother and who she was,” he said.

He was also able to bring in a music player to play classical music to soothe her.

“I think it is a good scheme,” he said.

“If staff see that other people care, that naturally motivates them,” he says.

Scottish Government already promotes John’s Campaign as part of a suite of “patient-centred care” measures.

However, it seems to be having a limited effect on the ground.

Ellen Hudson, associate director for professional practice at the Royal College of Nursing Scotland said the college supported the campaign in principle as long as it was not a substitute for employing sufficient staff.

Families do also need support and a degree of guidance, she

said.

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“There can be a reluctance , and it can’t be seen as providing care on the cheap,” she said.

“But other countries have always had the concept of family members coming in. Across Scotland there is a real shift towards open visiting.”

John’s Campaign was strongly inspired by the experience of BBC Scotland presenter Sally Magnusson, whose mother suffered delirium after being hospitalised suffering from dementia.