NHS Glasgow and Clyde extends visiting hours after requests from patients Scotland's largest health board has become the first in the country to extend visiting hours across its hospitals. NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde is introducing the longer visiting hours for most adult wards following requests from both patients and their relatives. Health chiefs hope the new visiting hours, from 1.30pm to 8.30pm every day, will mean those being cared for in hospital can spend more time with family and friends. While visiting hours on most wards are being extended, there are a number of wards where visiting times will remain unchanged. Maternity and children's wards will keep their existing visiting hours for the time being, the health board said, and acute medical and surgical receiving units will not have open visiting arrangements. In these wards, family and friends might be present when someone is admitted, and when a patient's condition is unstable or deteriorating, family or friends will be supported to stay with them, but otherwise visiting hours will be 7pm to 8pm. In addition, open visiting hours will not be introduced for intensive care units and high dependency units, where staff advise on visiting on an individual basis for critically ill patients. Rory Farrelly, director of nursing for the health board's acute services division, said: "As part of our commitment to offer patient-centred care, one of the subjects that was continually raised with us was visiting times and how unflexible they were. With this in mind, we asked patients and visitors how we could make things easier and as a result have extended the times visitors can see their relatives and friends. These new times will be in the majority of acute wards but there are areas that will still need to maintain the visiting times they currently have including maternity, children's wards, acute medical and surgical receiving units, intensive care and high dependency units. He added: "We hope that the introduction of these new visiting times will give visitors more flexibility and will offer patients more time with their loved ones." The extended visiting hours are being introduced after a pilot project earlier this year, which trialled this in some hospitals in five health board areas. At the time, Health Secretary Alex Neil described the visiting times pilot as "the first step towards making our NHS more 'user friendly' and giving patients what they want." Anne Marie Kennedy, a member of the Patients Panel which helps NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde improve the quality and provision of acute healthcare, welcomed today's announcement. "This change will make a big difference to family and friends of patients, enabling them to visit when it is most suitable for them to visit, ensuring family life and work commitments are not adversely affected," she said. This will ensure patients as well as family and friends are able to plan visits better and patients enjoy a better quality of time with their loved ones.