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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Main Authors:	Kim McMillan, David Kenneth Wright, Christine J. McPherson, Kristina Ma, Vasiliki Bitzas
Format:	article
Language:	EN
Published:	SAGE Publishing 2021
Subjects:	Nursing RT1-120
Online Access:	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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Visitor Restrictions, Palliative Care, and Epistemic Agency: A Qualitative Study of Nurses’ Relational Practice During the Coronavirus Pandemic

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