RULES banning hospital doctors and visitors from sitting on patients’ beds “diminish the joys of life” and are “dehumanising”, a medic said today.

Dozens of hospitals have told doctors, friends and family not to sit on beds in a bid to stop the spread of infections like MRSA and Clostridium difficile (C diff).

Others have banned visitors from taking flowers to their sick relatives for the same reason.

Yet such moves only make hospital more frightening places and stop patients enjoying any home comforts, a doctor said today.

Writing in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), Dr Iona Heath said there was “no hard evidence” that banning flowers or sitting on beds prevented the spread of infections. It seemed to be more a case of hospitals being seen to be take action.

She said: “Is it all in the interests of being seen to be doing something noticeable about the worrying levels of hospital-based infections, however ineffective and otherwise disruptive?

“Is this some sort of virtual cleanliness an illusion of activity with no substance?”

Dr Heath, a GP from London, said: “This ban on sitting on the bed seems to be imposed without exception even for patients who are known to be dying.”

She argued that doctors should never be discouraged from sitting, because patients consistently estimate they have been given more time when the doctor sits rather than stands.

A frequent complaint from hospital patients was that the “human dimension of care is often lacking”, Dr Heath said.

Elements of home should be brought back into hospitals and rules should only be enforced “when there is clear evidence to justify the erosion of any sense of homeliness that results”.

She went on: “Do not sit on the bed’ and ‘No flowers’ are injunctions that are all too similar to ‘Do not walk on the grass’ and ‘No ball games’, rules that mostly diminish the joys of life rather than enhance them and such rules, unless absolutely necessary, have no place in hospitals where joy is too often in short supply.”