"Open visiting and unhelpful nurse"

While visiting my Mum in hospital one of the nurses walked down the corridor ringing a bell at 19:55. This was unusual as the hospital and the ward had an open visiting policy as advertised on notice boards. My mum, the other patients and their visitors said that this was the second night that this had happened and they duly began saying goodbyes and leaving (including the husband of a patient who had been working a long day and had only arrived 5 minutes before the bell rang). 

I had wanted to ask about arranging a time to speak to Mum’s consultant so I went to the nurses station to do this (and also to find out why they were ringing bells!)

There were around five members of staff at the desk, I spoke to the nurse who still had the bell in their hands and asked if they could give me the phone number of my Mum’s consultant. They went to their colleagues at the desk and spoke briefly with them and came back and asked if I could phone in the morning as they didn’t have the number and the day shift would be able to help. I was disappointed with this as it felt as if no-one could be bothered to get up and find this phone number for me...and why should I have to phone the next shift who I knew would be busy with morning activities and ward rounds.

I was annoyed by this apparent unwillingness to help, so I thought I would ask about the bell ringing. The nurse said that it was to signal the end of visiting. I pointed to the notice on the board explaining open visiting...the nurse said that must be new and no-one had told them, so it probably wasn’t in effect yet.  I knew this wasn't right as I’d been visiting for a number of days on this ward. They then said that they hadn’t been on nights in this ward for a wee while. So I thought that they would then check with colleagues. To my amazement five minutes after returning to visit my mum, by which time all other visitors had gone, the same nurse came along the corridor ringing the bell saying visiting time was over.

My mum was agitated as she didn’t want me to cause a fuss, so I left annoyed by how visitors had been treated and disappointed in this experience which was far from “person centred”. If wards have changed to open or flexible visiting can someone please remove those bells so that this doesn’t happen?