A Call for a More Balanced Approach to Family Presence During a Public Health Emergency

 What would you want for your family?

Nine years ago, AJN published a Viewpoint article asserting the essential role of family caregivers. The article featured an elderly woman recuperating in a hospital, her daughter at her bedside planning for discharge with the care team. The authors argued that family engagement creates the foundation for safer care, better patient outcomes, and greater efficiency for nurses.

The same patient’s experience would likely have been very different during the Covid pandemic, especially during the intermittent surges over the past two years. The patient would be alone in the hospital, her daughter’s assurances communicated through a digital tablet. Overstretched nurses would provide updates to the family over the phone. Discharge education would occur through a car window moments before the patient’s daughter drove her home, feeling unprepared for what came next.

COVID-19’s highly transmissible properties have complicated the family engagement equation. Over the past two years, hospitals and nursing homes have enacted, eased up on, and then reinstated visitation bans, at times leaving questions as to whether restrictions implemented to reduce disease spread may be more detrimental than beneficial.

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