The Importance of Family Presence at the Bedside of Critically Ill Patients

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the visitor restrictions on patients and their families during the COVID-19 pandemic. At the beginning of the pandemic, visitation was highly restricted with only telecommunication as a means of “visiting” with your loved one who were hospitalized, especially in the ICU settings. During my research of keeper studies for my capstone project, the articles discussed different forms of communication. The articles discussed interventions such as electronic (e-visits) for physician offices and diaries kept in the ICU for communication between family and staff. Some discussed the effects of visitor restrictions and how it related to the care, grieving process, and dying process on the family members as well as the patients and healthcare workers. The design methods varied from systemic reviews, randomized control trials, and qualitative studies. The results from almost all of these studies did show that there is much more needed research to be done