Visitor Restrictions, Palliative Care, and Epistemic Agency: A Qualitative Study of Nurses’ Relational Practice During the Coronavirus Pandemic

Efforts to curb spread of COVID-19 has led to restrictive visitor policies in healthcare, which disrupt social connection between patients and their families at end of life. We interviewed 17 Canadian nurses providing palliative care, to solicit their descriptions of, and responses to, ethical issue...

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Autores principales: Kim McMillan, David Kenneth Wright, Christine J. McPherson, Kristina Ma, Vasiliki Bitzas
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Lenguaje:EN
Publicado: SAGE Publishing 2021
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Acceso en línea:https://doaj.org/article/4c8e3c1a6bcc403dbfbe4e4502f4a3a0
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spelling oai:doaj.org-article:4c8e3c1a6bcc403dbfbe4e4502f4a3a02021-11-26T16:33:21ZVisitor Restrictions, Palliative Care, and Epistemic Agency: A Qualitative Study of Nurses’ Relational Practice During the Coronavirus Pandemic2333-393610.1177/23333936211051702https://doaj.org/article/4c8e3c1a6bcc403dbfbe4e4502f4a3a02021-10-01T00:00:00Zhttps://doi.org/10.1177/23333936211051702https://doaj.org/toc/2333-3936Efforts to curb spread of COVID-19 has led to restrictive visitor policies in healthcare, which disrupt social connection between patients and their families at end of life. We interviewed 17 Canadian nurses providing palliative care, to solicit their descriptions of, and responses to, ethical issues experienced as a result of COVID-19 related circumstances. Our analysis was inductive and scaffolded on notions of nurses’ moral agency, palliative care values, and our clinical practice in end-of-life care. Our findings reveal that while participants appreciated the need for pandemic measures, they found blanket policies separating patients and families to be antithetical to their philosophy of palliative care. In navigating this tension, nurses drew on the foundational values of their practice, engaging in ethical reasoning and action to integrate safety and humanity into their work. These findings underscore the epistemic agency of nurses and highlight the limits of a purely biomedical logic for guiding the nursing ethics of the pandemic response.Kim McMillanDavid Kenneth WrightChristine J. McPhersonKristina MaVasiliki BitzasSAGE PublishingarticleNursingRT1-120ENGlobal Qualitative Nursing Research, Vol 8 (2021)
institution DOAJ
collection DOAJ
language EN
topic Nursing
RT1-120
spellingShingle Nursing
RT1-120
Kim McMillan
David Kenneth Wright
Christine J. McPherson
Kristina Ma
Vasiliki Bitzas
Visitor Restrictions, Palliative Care, and Epistemic Agency: A Qualitative Study of Nurses’ Relational Practice During the Coronavirus Pandemic
description Efforts to curb spread of COVID-19 has led to restrictive visitor policies in healthcare, which disrupt social connection between patients and their families at end of life. We interviewed 17 Canadian nurses providing palliative care, to solicit their descriptions of, and responses to, ethical issues experienced as a result of COVID-19 related circumstances. Our analysis was inductive and scaffolded on notions of nurses’ moral agency, palliative care values, and our clinical practice in end-of-life care. Our findings reveal that while participants appreciated the need for pandemic measures, they found blanket policies separating patients and families to be antithetical to their philosophy of palliative care. In navigating this tension, nurses drew on the foundational values of their practice, engaging in ethical reasoning and action to integrate safety and humanity into their work. These findings underscore the epistemic agency of nurses and highlight the limits of a purely biomedical logic for guiding the nursing ethics of the pandemic response.
format article
author Kim McMillan
David Kenneth Wright
Christine J. McPherson
Kristina Ma
Vasiliki Bitzas
author_facet Kim McMillan
David Kenneth Wright
Christine J. McPherson
Kristina Ma
Vasiliki Bitzas
author_sort Kim McMillan
title Visitor Restrictions, Palliative Care, and Epistemic Agency: A Qualitative Study of Nurses’ Relational Practice During the Coronavirus Pandemic
title_short Visitor Restrictions, Palliative Care, and Epistemic Agency: A Qualitative Study of Nurses’ Relational Practice During the Coronavirus Pandemic
title_full Visitor Restrictions, Palliative Care, and Epistemic Agency: A Qualitative Study of Nurses’ Relational Practice During the Coronavirus Pandemic
title_fullStr Visitor Restrictions, Palliative Care, and Epistemic Agency: A Qualitative Study of Nurses’ Relational Practice During the Coronavirus Pandemic
title_full_unstemmed Visitor Restrictions, Palliative Care, and Epistemic Agency: A Qualitative Study of Nurses’ Relational Practice During the Coronavirus Pandemic
title_sort visitor restrictions, palliative care, and epistemic agency: a qualitative study of nurses’ relational practice during the coronavirus pandemic
publisher SAGE Publishing
publishDate 2021
url https://doaj.org/article/4c8e3c1a6bcc403dbfbe4e4502f4a3a0
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