An ethical approach to considering family presence during COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic has required healthcare organizations to introduce risk mitigation strategies that challenge usual family presence (visitor) policies. Policies within healthcare must be viewed from an ethical lens, which includes ensuring that the patient voice helps guide decision-making. In considering pandemic-specific family presence policies, Kingston Health Sciences Centre, an academic tertiary care hospital in Southeastern Ontario, applied an ethical framework for decision-making. The various tensions between the values of duty to provide care, protection of the public from harm, transparency, proportionality, and patient-centred care are highlighted in a discussion of how patient partners contributed to decision-making about family presence in the first 9 months of the COVID-19 pandemic.