Visitor restrictions during a public health emergency

During the SARS crisis, the Ministry of Health and Long Term Care issued directives to hospitals and long term care facilities instructing them to restrict the number of visitors to their sites. [...] The struggle to do good was acutely evident throughout the SARS crisis as health care providers and institutions sought to keep the needs of individual patients at the forefront as they coped with competing demands and conflicting values in the context of a constantly changing and uncertain environment. [...] We began by looking at the experiences of health care workers and institutions related to visitor restrictions by gathering and reviewing the following data: 1. Summaries of the submissions by individuals, organizations, and facilities to the Campbell Commission; and 2. Responses to the questionnaire sent out by the Expert Panel on SARS and Infectious Disease Control. [...] As stated by one respondent, and reflected in the comments of others, “many were not aware of restrictions until they came to hospital.” Only limited information about visitor restrictions was communicated from the Ministry to the general public and certain groups of individuals, such as the homeless or non- English speaking persons, had almost no access to information about visitor restrictions r [...] The experience of healthcare providers and the issues that emerged around the detrimental psychosocial impact, communication breakdowns, and wide and varied interpretation, implementation, and response to Ministry directives point to areas of conflict relative to many of these values.